'Phishing' filter improves security

Letters clog the mailbox today ... let's open Outlook, scan for spam and viruses and answer the few that remain.

Question: Every time I open Internet Explorer it wants to know if I should turn on a "phishing" filter. I don't know the correct answer to this question, so I keep not answering it.

Answer: Good question. A "phishing" site is one that has been set up to look exactly like a real site but designed to steal your information. A typical case: You get an e-mail that your PayPal account has been compromised and urging you to log in immediately. You click on the link in your mail and are whisked directly to PayPal so you can correct this problem.

However, the site to which you are sent is not PayPal, even though it looks just like it. It was set up only to let people try their user names and passwords a few times. It records that information in a database so a creep can come along later and use that information to log into the real one.

Internet Explorer 7 will check the Web site and offer you a warning if it thinks it is a fake. It's not a perfect solution, but it is better than nothing, so I would turn it on. You can do so by opening IE and selecting TOOLS across the top and going to "Phishing Filter" and turning on automatic checking.

In my experience it slows the loading of some pages for a few seconds, but it's likely worth it for the added security.

Question: In a previous column you mentioned a free version of Microsoft Office that one can download. Where can I get it and why is it free?

Answer: It is not a free version of Microsoft Office but a free suite of applications that do some of what Office will do.

OpenOffice is a free product available on CD or for download that handles the basic functionality of Office apps like Word and Excel very well. It's a great choice for students and people who don't need the bells and whistles. You can get it at www.openoffice.org.

It's free because it is "open source," meaning many of the enhancements on it are created by the users themselves and given back to the product for free.

Question: My daughter is heading to college in the fall and they are strongly recommending we buy one of three computers from the university directly, all IBM models I believe. My daughter wants a Mac and we don't know what we ought to do.