Introduction

This book contains courses’ lessons held at the Free University of Bolzano Bozen. It contains only the
first part of the courses, namely the lessons on:

 computer introduction,
 Microsoft Windows,
 computer networks,
 computer dangers and security.
It does not contain the parts on Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, financial functions, Microsoft Access,
computer algorithms, SPSS, Visual Basic for Applications, which are very well covered by the respective
courses’ suggested books.
This book is usually updated every year, please take a look at the edition date.

Disclaimers
This book is designed for very novice computer users. It often contains oversimplifications of reality and
every technical detail is purposely omitted. Expert users will find this book useless and, for certain aspects,
partially wrong.
This book supposes that the user is using Microsoft Windows 8 operating system in English language.
However, most of the book is perfectly readable with other Windows versions, while some menus and
instructions can be rather different if the language is not English (Windows language may be changed on
multi-language installations).
The novice user in this book is, for simplicity, always considered male. This is not meant to be gender
discrimination.

Table of Contents
Introduction .......................................................... 1 3.2. Communication ......................................... 15
3.3. Internet connections ................................. 18
1. Computers .................................................... 2
1.1. Storage ......................................................... 2 4. Computer security ..................................... 20
1.2. Software ....................................................... 3 4.1. Encryption.................................................. 20
4.2. Passwords .................................................. 23
2. Microsoft Windows ...................................... 6
4.3. Viruses ....................................................... 25
2.1. Versions and editions ................................... 6
4.4. Emails......................................................... 27
2.2. Regional and language settings .................... 7
4.5. Navigation.................................................. 29
2.3. File system .................................................... 8
4.6. Attacks from outside ................................. 30
3. Computer networks ................................... 14 4.7. Backup ....................................................... 31
3.1. Technical aspects........................................ 14
Dr. Paolo Coletti Basic Computer course book

1. Computers
This chapter presents with a brief description of computer main components, of the most common devices
and of the typical software components for novice user.

1.1. Storage
1.1.1. Measures
Before starting with the computer description, it is useful to become proficient with the data size
terminology, which will often be used in this book.
Computers have a very elementary way to store data: they can remember only 0 or 1. A value of 0 or 1 is
called bit and all computer data are stored as sequences of bits. A sequence of 8 bits is called a byte, which
is a quantity large enough to store usually a letter or a digit (even though sometimes 2 bytes are necessary).
Modern computers are able to deal with enormous quantity of bytes, forcing us to introduce other
quantities:
 Kilobyte (KB), approximately 1,000 bytes,
 Megabyte (MB), approximately 1,000 KB or one million bytes,
 Gigabyte (GB), approximately 1,000 MB or one billion bytes,
 Terabyte (TB), approximately 1,000 GB or one trillion bytes.
Usually the unformatted text of a whole book can fit in some KB, while for an image in a good resolution
(let’s say ready to be printed on A4 paper) or for a modern song some MB are required, while a film in high
quality needs some GB.

1.1.2. Moore’s law

Over the last 40 years, computer hardware has been continuously improving its performances with an
exponential growth. This growth is summarized by the famous Moore’s law which says that the number of
transistors in a processor doubles every 18 months. This law can be extended to almost every aspect of
hardware and we may say that the performance (be it speed or capacity) of hardware doubles every 18
months, thus leading to a general exponential growth. Unfortunately software’s performance does not
increase with the same rate.

1.1.3. Devices
The computer uses several devices to permanently store and move data, which vary a lot in terms of
capability, cost, speed and portability.
The most used is the internal hard disk, which usually is inside the computer box and
cannot be moved. Its size currently ranges from 1 to 2 TB. On the other hand, an
external hard disk is outside the computer, has the same size and obviously can be
moved. Its only disadvantage is being slightly slower.
SSD Solid State Drives are starting to invade the market and will soon replace traditional
hard disks. They are not disks at all, but very large memory cards shaped like a hard disks which can entirely
replace the internal hard disk. Their main advantages are that not having moving parts (they do not rotate
at high speed like hard disks) are more robust and that in most situations they are faster than hard disks
(up to 10 times faster). Their disadvantage is the limited size which currently is 500 GB and their high price.

Page 2 of 33 Edition 8.0 (01/03/2016)

Basic Computer course book Dr. Paolo Coletti

CD, DVD and Blu-ray are an alternative way to store data. They contain about 700 MB, 4 GB
and 25 GB, respectively. They required an appropriate reader to be read, which is available
on many computers, and an appropriate writer device to be written, which is available only
on some computers. This technology is, however, rapidly fading, as disks are much larger
and easier to damage compared to USB pen drivers or memory cards.
Memory stick or USB pen drive is the most used way to temporary store and move data. Its
size is now up to 128 GB, however its reliability is not perfect, therefore
it is used mostly to move data.
Another common way to store and move data is through a memory
card, used by external devices such as photo cameras or to expand mobile phones’
memory.

1.2. Software
Software can be divided into three big categories: operating systems, programs and data.
The operating system takes care of controlling computer hardware and human-computer interaction. There
are currently three widely used operating systems:

Microsoft Windows, which is the market leader,

Macintosh computers have their own operating system Mac OS X,

Linux (it is a family of very similar operating systems), which is a costless operating system,

Android, a family of very similar Linux-based operating systems for mobile devices,

iOS, for Apple mobile devices,

Windows Phone, Microsoft’s operating system for mobile devices.

Programs are software which is used to do particular tasks, e.g. Word for document writing, Explorer for
Internet navigation, the Calculator for mathematical operations.
Data is everything which is produced either by the user or by programs (sometimes even by the operating
system) to store information, e.g. a document file produced by Word is data, a downloaded web page is
data.

1.2.1. Software licenses

Software can be divided, from a commercial point of view, using two features: the cost and the permission
to be modified.
Subdivision by cost is:
 freeware, software which is completely costless. The producers of this software are either public
institutions such as universities, or developers who do it for personal interest or advertisement or
private company who do it for dumping reasons. Some examples are Skype communication
program or Linux operating system;

Edition 8.0 (01/03/2016) Page 3 of 33

Dr. Paolo Coletti Basic Computer course book

 shareware, software which is initially costless but after a certain period the user is asked to pay a
fee or delete it; or software which has two versions: a free one, but incomplete or with
advertisement banners, and a complete advertisement-free one, for which the user must pay. The
most popular examples are mobile phones apps;
 commercial, software for which the user has to pay a license to use it. Common examples are
Microsoft Windows operating system or Photoshop image editing program;
 subscription-based, software for which the user pays a periodic fee to use it. This software typically
is also offered on the web and in this case the user does not have to care about installation nor
updates. Example are Microsoft Office 365 and Photoshop Creative Clouds;
 private, software uniquely built, under payment, for a specific customer to fit his needs. Only the
costumer may use it. A typical example is the university’s students-courses-exams-professors
database system.
The permission to be modified can seem a trivial question for the novice user, however for program
developers and computer experts being authorized to modify a software is a great advantage since it can
be improved, checked for errors and tailored to specific needs. The “open source versus proprietary
software” is a strong ethical and economical debate in the computer scientists’ community. Subdivision by
permission to modify is:
 open source software may be studied, used and especially modified by anyone. The software
developers at the same time legally authorize any modification and they distribute the source of
the software to put other developers in a condition to easily modify it. Open source software is also
automatically freeware. The most typical example is Linux operating system.
 copyleft software is open source but carries the restriction that any modification must be
distributed as open source and copyleft, thus impeding that software becomes, after a
modification, proprietary. The most famous copy left contract license is the GNU Public License (see
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html).
 proprietary software is distributed (costless as Adobe Acrobat Reader, or as a shareware as WinZip,
or most often sold as commercial software as Microsoft Office) with the explicit legal warning not
to modify it and technically locked to prevent other developers to see or modify its source.

1.2.2. Software naming

Software is usually identified by a name, for example “Linux” or “Microsoft Office”, sometimes by a
distribution/edition name “Linux Ubuntu”, “Microsoft Office Professional” and very often by a version
number, a sequence of numbers, points and letters (sometimes, as for Windows, commercial names) which
distinguishes the changes made by developers with time, such as “Linux Ubuntu 13.10” or “Microsoft Office
Professional 2013”. Obviously the version numbers of open source software changes rapidly, due to the
many developers working on them.

1.2.3. Data format licenses

Data need to be saved with a certain structure, called formats. For example, a plain text file may be simply
saved as a sequence of letters and symbols, which corresponds to the TXT format. More complex
structures, such as images, videos, but also formatted texts, need more elaborated formats to be stored.
These formats may be:
 closed proprietary, a format owned by a software company and kept as a trade secret. In this way
only programs build by that company can use those data files and no other company is able to

Page 4 of 33 Edition 8.0 (01/03/2016)

Basic Computer course book Dr. Paolo Coletti

endanger its monopoly. A famous example is DOC format which, until 2007, was kept secret by
Microsoft, thus preventing competitors from building alternatives to Microsoft Word program.
 open proprietary, a format publicly available but whose improvements and control are under the
ownership of a software company. A typical example is the new Word format DOCX.
 open, a publicly available format which follows official standards whose control is under ownership
of public organizations, such as American ANSI, German DIN or Italian UNI. Typical examples are
image’s format GIF or formatted text’s format PDF or web page’s format HTML.

Edition 8.0 (01/03/2016) Page 5 of 33

Dr. Paolo Coletti Basic Computer course book

2. Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is currently the market leader operating system, it is the usual interface which appears
when the user turns on a personal computer with Windows operating system.

2.1. Versions and editions

Microsoft released Windows 7 in 2009, which is the currently more widespread Microsoft operative
system. It is installed on approximately 46% of computers. Enterprise edition is currently (November 2015)
installed on some UNIBZ computers.
Microsoft released Windows 8 in 2013 with a new user interface designed
for tablets with touch screen, which was not welcomed by many Windows 8
professional users, in order to increase compatibility with its mobile device’s
operating system Windows Phone 8. With its first update Microsoft decided Windows 8 Pro Basic
to change name to Windows 8.1. It is installed on approximately 17% of
computers. It is available in only three editions. Enterprise edition is Windows 8 Enterprise
currently (July 2015) installed on all UNIBZ computers.
Microsoft released Windows 10 in July 2015 and its installation has been
Windows 10 Home
strongly suggested to Windows 8 users. It is basically Windows 8 with few
extra features. It is currently installed on 13% of computers. It is available in
only three editions. Education/Enterprise edition is currently (November Windows 10 Pro
2015) installed on some UNIBZ computers.
Windows 10
Education/Enterprise

At unibz some computers have a multi-boot system. When the computer is switched on, it asks the user
which operating system he would like to use and, after a short time, it starts with the default operating
system. In case the user wants to use a different operating systems, he obviously must restart the
computer.

2.1.1. Computer locking problem

Microsoft Windows sometimes becomes unstable: it can unpredictably, without any warning and when the
user does not expect it and typically when he is doing something very important and urgent, lock and
refuse to respond to user’s actions. When this happens, it is usually caused by the program that is used and
therefore the first thing to do is to try to close the current program. If this does not improve the situation,
the only other solution left is to turn off the computer. The list of operations to try until the computer
answers to user’s commands is:

Page 6 of 33 Edition 8.0 (01/03/2016)

Basic Computer course book Dr. Paolo Coletti

1. if the mouse works, click the X button on the

program window or otherwise press ALT+F4;
2. press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC; select the program
from the list and press End Program;
3. press CTRL+ALT+DEL and, from the bottom
right icon, choose Shut Down;
4. press the computer on/off button;
5. unplug the electric power.
In any case all the current unsaved work will be lost;
in the last two cases the operating system can
sometimes be damaged but very often it will repair
by itself the next time the computer is turned on.
Therefore it is always a very good idea to save very
often the current work, especially when it is
important, urgent, or difficult to redo.

2.2. Regional and language settings

Keyboard settings and number
formats may be changed
pressing Windows+X and then
choosing “Control panel”. Then,
as soon as the Control Panel
opens up, click on “Clock,
Language and Region”, then
“Region” and “Formats”. Then in
“Additional Settings” the user is
able to change the format of
numbers, especially the decimal
separator, the currency and the
date format, especially the
English (month-day) and
European (day-month) formats.
Moreover, it is always a good
idea to check that the list
separator be set always to
semicolon, otherwise Excel’s
functions will not work properly.

Edition 8.0 (01/03/2016) Page 7 of 33

Dr. Paolo Coletti Basic Computer course book

2.2.1. Keyboards and languages

Before starting this section it is necessary to take a close look at your keyboard. Locate these keys since
they will be used in the rest of this manual and are very useful in many programs:

English keyboard German keyboard Italian Keyboard Main function

CTRL STRG CTRL
Windows Windows Windows Activate shortcuts in Windows 8
ALT ALT ALT
ALTGR ALTGR ALTGR Produce character on the key’s right left
F1 to F12 F1 to F12 F1 to F12
DEL ENTF CANC Delete next character
INS EINFG INS Toggle insert/overwrite mode
HOME or  POS1  Go to beginning
END ENDE FINE Go to end
PG and PG BILD and BILD PAG and PAG Go one page up or down
BACKSPACE or    Delete last character
ENTER or   INVIO or  Enter data
TAB or   TAB or  Move through the window
SHIFT or    Capitalize letters
CAPS LOCK or    Keep SHIFT pressed
ARROWS    Move the cursor
In this book the English name for keys will be indicated. When A+B is indicated, it means that the user must
press key A, then press key B, and then release both keys.
Another operation which can be useful in a multilanguage environment is changing the keyboard. While
this can be done from the Language menu of the Control Panel, it is much easier to adjust it directly from
the right side of the application bar, simply clicking on keyboard icon and selecting the appropriate one. If
no keyboard’s choice appears on the application bar, just press SHIFT with the left ALT key to toggle among
available keyboard’s settings.

2.3. File system

Before starting this section it is necessary to do the following operations:
1. Press Windows+I
2. open the Control Panel
3. choose “Appearance and Personalization”
4. choose “File Explorer Options” (it is “Folder Options” in Windows 8)
5. choose “View”
6. deselect “Hide extensions for known file types”.
In this way extensions (see section 2.3.3) are shown and file types are better recognized.
In case you are using a Mac, it is even easier. Go to Finder > Preferences menu, select the Advanced tab and
check the "Show all filename extensions" box.

Page 8 of 33 Edition 8.0 (01/03/2016)

Basic Computer course book Dr. Paolo Coletti

2.3.1. Files and directories

Software is stored on storage devices in a special container called file. The operating system uses
a lot of files for itself and for its data, a program usually uses one file for itself and other files for
its data, and the user uses some files for his data. A file is represented by a small picture called
icon.
Another special object is the directory or folder, which is basically a container for files and other
directories and is represented with an icon depicting a yellow closed or open folder. Double
clicking on a directory opens a new window which presents the directory content.
Each storage device is a big directory, accessible from My Computer
window, which contains directories and files. Each of these
subdirectories may contain other files and other sub-subdirectories,
and so on in a hierarchical way, forming a tree with the hard disk (or
another storage device) as the root, directories as branches and files
as leaves. On UNIBZ computers, the usual hard disk are “C:” which
contains programs, “E:” which contains courses information and “F:”
which contains user’s reserved space. Disks directories “A:” and “B:”
are usually reserved for floppy disks, and “D:” or “Z:” for CD-reader.

Choosing the “View” menu of a directory windows provides the user with several different ways to look at
files and directories, the most important way being the Details which can show interesting information on
files and directories such as their size and date of last modification.

Each file and directory can be univocally identified by its absolute path or address. For directories it is the
path which appears on the address bar of the directory window, while for files it is the path of their
containing directory followed by “\” and the file name. For example, the absolute path of directory
“Common” in “HP” directory in “Program Files” directory in the C: hard disk is “C:\Program
Files\HP\Common” as can be seen from the address bar. While, the HPeDiag.dll file has the absolute path
“C:\Program Files\HP\Common\HPeDiag.dll”.
Note that, for Windows operating system, capital or small caps letters in paths are perfectly equal.
A special and tricky object is the link or shortcut. Although its icon looks like a file icon,
the small curved arrow on the left corner clearly indicates that this object is a link. A
link is simply an address to a file or directory, it is not a real file or directory. When the
user clicks on the link, the computer behaves exactly as if the user is clicking on the
real file or directory (if Windows can find the real one, which is not the case if in the
meantime somebody deleted or moved it). However, any copy/move operation on the link will simply
copy/move the link and not the real file or directory; especially copying/moving the link to another disk will
probably cause it to malfunction. Therefore it is a good idea for novice users to avoid using links at all.

Edition 8.0 (01/03/2016) Page 9 of 33

Dr. Paolo Coletti Basic Computer course book

2.3.2. Files’ operations

When double clicking on a file, Windows usually starts a program. The user is often unaware of an
important difference:
 double clicking on a program runs the program which was double clicked
 double clicking on a file calls the program associated with that file and runs it, at the same time telling
the program to open the file. If no program is associated with that file type, Windows asks the user
which program should open the file.
Copying a file means reproducing it to another location or to the same location with a different name.
Copying a directory means reproducing it to another location, or to the same location with a different
name, together with its entire tree of subdirectories and files. To
copy a file or directory, Windows offers several methods, the most
used being:
 drag the object to the destination. If a plus symbol does not
appear, press CTRL key to have it appear while dragging.
Release the object in the destination;
 select the object and click the right mouse button. Select
“copy”. Point the mouse to the destination and click the
right mouse button. Select “paste”. If the destination is the
original location, the file name changes to “copy of …”;
 select the object and press CTRL+C. Point the mouse to the destination and press CTRL+V. If the
destination is the original location, the file name changes to “copy of …”.
Moving a file means moving it to another location losing the file in the original place. Moving a directory
means moving it to another location together with its entire tree of subdirectories and files. To move a file
or directory windows offers several methods, the most used being:
 drag the object to the destination. If a plus or a link symbol does appear, press CTRL or SHIFT key to
remove it. Release the object in the destination;
 select the object and click the right mouse button. Select “cut” and the icon
becomes lighter. Point the mouse to the destination and click the right mouse
button. Select “paste”;
 select the object and press CTRL+X and the icon becomes lighter. Point the mouse to the
destination and press CTRL+V.
To create a link to a file or directory:
 drag the object to the destination of the link. If a link symbol does not appear, press CTRL+SHIFT
until it appears. Release the object in the destination;
 select the object and click the right mouse button. Select “create shortcut”. A link is created in the
same directory.
Deleting a file means often putting it into the trash can where it can be recuperated unless the
trash can is emptied. Deleting a directory means putting it to the trash can together with its entire
tree of subdirectories and files. Pay special attention, since not always the trash can works as user
expects and sometimes files are deleted without passing through the trash can. To delete a file or directory
windows offers several methods, the most used being:
 drag the object to the trash can and release it;
 select the object and click the right mouse button. Select “delete”;

Page 10 of 33 Edition 8.0 (01/03/2016)

Basic Computer course book Dr. Paolo Coletti

 select the object and press DEL key.

To rename a file or directory, simply select the object, click on
the name and retype it. Usually Windows accepts most names,
but novice users should stick with only letters, numbers and
spaces, since other characters may be forbidden.
To create a new directory, simply right click the mouse and choose
“New” and “Folder”. After the creation, rename it.
Sometimes files occupy a lot of space and need to be reduced to save disk space or to be sent by
email; other times files must be put in a package to remain together or to be sent as a single file
via email. These two operations are accomplished compressing a set of files and directories,
which means using a special program (WinZip or 7-Zip or IZArc or the operative system itself) to reduce
(from 0% to 90% depending on the file type) the file size and produce a new single file called zip-archive
containing all the selected files and directories.
To compress a set of files and directories:
1. select the files and directories all together,
2. click the right mouse key,
3. select “IzArc” or the installed compression program and select something like “Add to Archive
File…”,
4. a dialog box appears asking you to choose the zip-archive name and its destination;
5. in this dialog box you must also choose the compression method, which is strongly suggested to be
ZIP to be compatible with other programs;
6. in this dialog an encryption method (see section 4.1 on page 20) may be chosen. If your zip-archive
should be opened by anybody, then choose “None”: Otherwise, if you want the zip-archive to be
uncompressed only by people knowing a proper password, choose any of the encryption methods,
such as “AES 128 bit”, and provide the password.
Other files or directories may be added later to the zip-archive simply dragging them on the zip-archive file
(this is a copy and not a move operation) if it is not encrypted.
To extract files from a zip-archive file, simply click the right mouse key on the file and from the drop-down
menu choose the appropriate extract option: the content will appear in the location you have chosen,
together with all its directories’ structure.
When double clicking on a compressed file, if the compression program is properly installed, it will open in
a window as if it were a directory. But it is not a normal directory, it is simply a window, produced by the
compression program, with the list of the zip-archive’s content: the user should not open files from this
window since it is a very unreliable way to modify files! Files can be copied from this window to a real
directory simply dragging them to the directory. When the entire content of the zip-archive has to be
extracted or when the user wants to preserve the original tree structure, it is better to use the Extract
button of this special window.

2.3.3. File types

Windows identifies a file type by its extension, which is everything after the last dot in the filename. Usually
it is a 3 or 4 character acronym. Using the file extension, Windows knows the file type and decides which
program will open that file. If the file extension does not show up, follow the instructions at section 2.3 on
page 8. The most important file types are:

Edition 8.0 (01/03/2016) Page 11 of 33

Dr. Paolo Coletti Basic Computer course book

File type Typical programs that open it Typical extensions Typical icons

Program itself .exe .com .bat

Compressed WinZip / 7-Zip / IZArc .zip

Text Notepad .txt

Document Word / Acrobat / PowerPoint .docx .doc .rtf .pdf .ppt

Sheet Excel .xlsx .xls .csv

Explorer / Picture Fax Viewer / Paint /

Image .jpg .jpeg .gif .bmp .png
Office Picture Manager

Video Media Player .avi .mov .mpg .mpeg

Audio Media Player / WinAmp .mp3 .wav

Web page Explorer .html .htm

2.3.4. File permissions

For each file Windows 7 operative system uses a permission.
Click the right button of the mouse on a file or directory and
select “Proprieties” and “Security”. The security dialog box
shows the list of users or groups of users who may access this
object, while not listed users may not access it. For each user or
group this dialog box displays the permissions, the most
important being:
 read permission, to copy and open the object;
 read and execute, same as read, plus run the object if it
is a program;
 list content (for directories), to see the content;
 write permission (for directories), to create files and
subdirectories;
 modify permission (also called, when referred to a file,
write permission), same as read and execute, plus
delete, move, rename, save modifications;
 full control, same as modify, plus change permissions.
The owner of the file usually has full control on it and may change permissions or add new authorized
groups or users. A special group is the Administrators group (containing the users involved in technical
administration of computers) which has full control on every object.

2.3.5. Network folders at UNIBZ

On UNIBZ LAN there are shared hard disks on which common information is stored, so that it is accessible
from every computer. These are called network folders. Some of them are:

Page 12 of 33 Edition 8.0 (01/03/2016)

Basic Computer course book Dr. Paolo Coletti

 \\ubz01fst\courses\course_coletti which contains utility files that will be used during the course.
These files must never be opened double-clicking from here, otherwise they will be locked (see
section 2.3.4 on page 12); they should be copied on each user’s desktop before opening them;
 \\ubz01fst\courses\exam_coletti\, followed by user’s login name or the user’s last name and first
name, which will contain exam files and which is accessible only by the user;
 \\ubz01fst\students\, followed by year, faculty and user’s login name, contains a copy of the
student’s disk F, desktop, and configuration.
While connecting to these directories from a unibz computer is straightforward, if you are using a notebook
you must take care that you are connected to ScientificNetwork WiFi. If you are using a VPN connection
from home, or sometimes even when connected from a notebook, digit \\ubz01fst.unibz.it instead of
simply \\ubz01fst and, when asked for login name and password, digit unibz.it\login name instead of simply
your login name. Finally, Mac users may find it much easier to map it permanently: make sure you are
connected to ScientificNetwork WiFi, Finder  Go  Connect to Server, use as address \\ubz01fst.unibz.it
(try smb://ubz01fst.unibz.it if that one does not work) then enter unibz.it\login name and your password
and click OK.

2.3.6. Roaming user profile at UNIBZ

Whenever the user logs in on a new computer, usually he should find a complete new profile (Desktop,
icons, Documents, configuration), which is obviously very annoying. In order to let him find always his stuff
as it has been left on the last computer used, whenever the user logs off all his profile is copied on directory
\\ubz01fst\students\, followed by year, faculty and user’s login name (for example, for Diana Pfeifer
enrolled in 2012 it is \\ubz01fst\students\User2012\Eco\dpfeifer). Whenever he logs in again on any
university’s computer, that computer retrieves all his profile’s stuff from this directory.
This mechanism, called roaming user profile, works fine only if the user is not using too much disk space
(which is usually 300 MB, but it is a good idea to stay below 150 MB). If the user is over quota, the system
sends a warning via email to the user and, if the user remains over quota, this mechanism does not work
anymore. Moreover, if the user still remains over quota, he will be forbidden from saving any file on the
computer he is currently using.
Therefore it is a good idea to always work on a USB pen drive (which is then copied on another personal
computer) and to periodically check the disk space looking at the proprieties of this directory. If a warning
email has been received or, even worse, roaming user profile does not work anymore, files need to be
deleted not from the current computer (since the mechanism is not working anymore) but directly going
through this directory.

Edition 8.0 (01/03/2016) Page 13 of 33

Dr. Paolo Coletti Basic Computer course book

3. Computer networks
This part of the book is dedicated to computer networks from a user’s perspective. Nowadays a computer
is very likely to belong to some company’s network, or to be connected to the Internet via an Internet
provider, and is therefore exposed to all the typical network problems. Without entering into technical
details, this section will explore the situations in which a novice user can find himself in troubles and how
he can try to survive dialoguing with network administrators in their own strange technical language.

3.1. Technical aspects

A computer network is a set of devices which communicate and share resources. These devices are mostly
computers, and sometimes stand-alone hard disks, telephones, printers and terminals (processorless
computers which must rely on other computers to work).

3.1.1. Server and client

A computer network interaction is based on the client server architecture. When considering a single
interaction, one computer is the server and the other one is the client. The server is the computer which is
offering its resource, usually programmed to wait until someone asks for its resource. The client is the
computer which uses the resource, which sends the request to a waiting server.
For example, when sending a document to the printer, the user’s computer is the client while the printer is
the server; when retrieving personal emails, the user’s computer is the client which connects to the
mailserver asking for available emails. When talking to a friend on an Internet chat, the interaction is
composed of two different interactions: the user’s computer as a client is connected to the chat room’s
computer acting as a server, and the friend’s computer does the same interaction.
The same computer may be the client for a service and the server for another service. For example, a
library computer may have a CD inside its reader shared to the network (server for the CD) and may be at
the same time used by a user to print his own documents (client for the printer).

3.1.2. Areas
Computer networks are commonly divided into three categories:
 Local Area Network (LAN or Intranet), usually the network of computers in the same building or
belonging to the same owner. Inside the LAN every computer is well identified and usually every
user is known. It is considered a trusted area.
 Wide Area Network (WAN or Internet), which is everything which connects LANs. Computers’ and
users’ identification is very hard and anonymity is possible. It is considered a dangerous area.
 Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a way to recognize a computer outside the LAN as a trusted
computer: the user is identified with a password and his computer, even though connected via
Internet, will be considered as part of the LAN, for as long as it remains connected. VPN is typically
required to identify portable computers connected via wireless connection.

3.1.3. Transfer speed

The network connecting components are the cables, which determine the speed of the LAN. Cables have a
speed measure in bps (bits per second) which indicates how many bits can flow through the cable in one
second.

Page 14 of 33 Edition 8.0 (01/03/2016)

Basic Computer course book Dr. Paolo Coletti

 Ethernet cables have a speed of 10 Mbps and can thus carry 1.25 MB each second, meaning that,
for example, a 600 MB movie can be transferred in 8 minutes from one computer to another one,
supposing no one (neither users nor computers) is using that network tract for other purposes
during the transfer.
 Fast Ethernet cables have a speed of 100 Mbps.
 Gigabit Ethernet cables have a speed of 1 Gbps.
 A wireless network, a cableless network where computers use radio signals to communicate, has
usually a speed around 30-80 Mbps, depending on the wireless generation.
To find out how much time does it take to transfer a file with a size expressed in bytes, divide the
connection speed in bps by 8 to find out the byte rate per second and then divide the file size by the speed
to find out the number of seconds it takes for the file transfer. For example, to transfer a 600 MB file
through an Fast Ethernet connection, find out the speed of 12.5 MB per second (12,500,000 bytes per
second) and then divide 600 MB (or 600,000,000 bytes) by 12.5 (or by 12,500,000) to find out the time of
48 seconds.

3.2. Communication
Inside a computer network many communication programs are installed on Intranet computers to connect
to the Internet or even to internal computers.

3.2.1. Web browser

A web browser is a client program to navigate the WWW and retrieve web pages.
It runs directly on the user’s computer as a client and connects to external web-
servers, identified with the www prefix in the Internet name, to retrieve web
pages. The market leader with about 52% (Business Insider, March 2015) is the
browser from Google Chrome, followed by Internet Explorer, a freeware
proprietary software with 21%, and by Mozilla Firefox, an open source software
with 18%. Microsoft in July 2015 has launched its new browser, Microsoft Edge,
which will replace Internet Explorer.

3.2.2. Mail reader

A mail reader is a client program to send and retrieve emails. It runs directly on the
user’s computer as a client and connects to a mail-server, a program in charge of
collecting and dispatching emails. The market leader is Microsoft Outlook, a
commercial proprietary software. It has many competitors, the most famous being the
open source Mozilla Thunderbird and the free Windows Live Mail.

Another way to read and send emails is through webmail systems, which are websites where the user can
enter and read his received email and send new ones acting directly on the mail-server, without
downloading them nor using any client. It can be useful for various reasons: it does not require the
installation of a mail reader program; old received emails are always available on the website and can thus
be accessed from home, office and while traveling, even without a personal laptop; the mailserver takes
care of emails backup. But on the other hand it requires a continuous fast connection even to write a single
long email, which can be costly and, in some situations, impossible and usually the email space is limited.
The most famous website interfaces are the Microsoft Outlook Web App, where the web interface looks

Edition 8.0 (01/03/2016) Page 15 of 33

Dr. Paolo Coletti Basic Computer course book

exactly like Microsoft Outlook, and the Webmail interface, used and personalized by most Internet
providers.

3.2.3. Posta Elettronica Certificata PEC

When sending an email, the sender has no proof that it has been sent, for example to be used in a court of
justice, and no guarantee that the email has been dispatched. Some mail readers use a receipt system, but
the receiver is not obliged to send back the receipt.
In order to overcome these problems, many solutions have been proposed. The Italian Posta Elettronica
Certificata (PEC) system has become one of the most widespread solutions, thanks to law Decreto
Ministeriale 6 May 2009 which guarantees a free PEC email address to every citizen and thanks to law
82/2005 which determines that PEC receipts are legal proves.
When an email is sent from a PEC address to another PEC address, the sender receives two receipt: the first
one is a proof that the email has been sent with date and time, while the second one is a proof that the
email has been dispatched to the mailbox of the receiver (or, equivalently, received by the sender). This
does not represent a proof that the email has been actually read, but from the moment the email is
dispatched to the mailbox it is the receiver’s responsibility to read it. Under this circumstances, it is
perfectly equivalent to “raccomandata con ricevuta di ritorno”. Emails can be send also from a PEC address
to a non-PEC address, and in this case the receiver gets only the sent proof but not the dispatched-received
proof, like the “raccomandata semplice”. When an email is sent from a non-PEC address to a PEC address,
no receipt is produced and this is equivalent to a standard letter.
Moreover, even though it is not officially required, PEC to PEC also guarantees that content be not altered
and that sender’s email address is the indicated one. However, it is important to note that PEC alone does
not guarantee that the sender is really the person who claims to be and that content remains unread until
it reaches destination. In order to overcome these last two problems, encryption and digital signature (see
section 4.1 on page 20) must be used.

3.2.4. Voice over IP programs

Voice over IP (VoIP) programs are able to use the computer connection as a substitute for standard
telephone. Equipped with either microphone and headphones or with a real telephone-like device, the user
can send his voice through the Internet to remote computers or even to real remote telephones, thus
saving on telephone bills.
VoIP requires a subscription to a VoIP’s website, the most famous being Skype, who decides the telephone
fares. Typically calling other VoIP’s users is free all over the world, while calling fixed telephones depends
only on the destination country and is independent from the caller’s country, with a fare which is
comparable to the standard local telephone call (about 2 €cent/minute in February 2014). On the other
hand, calling mobile telephones is, for the moment, still very expensive (about 7 €cent/minute in February
2014); for this reason, special VoIP telephones, which can be programmed to automatically decide between
VoIP and the standard telephone line according to the dialed number, are appearing on the market.
A similar system is WhatsApp messaging system, in practice a “SMS over IP” system in which people
exchange messages and multimedia material through a chat system installed on mobile devices. The major
difference with respect to most Internet communication systems is that WhatsApp uses a fully centralized
architecture, i.e. all communications pass through WhatsApp company’s servers and there is never a real
direct communication between two users. However, non-technical users do not realize nor care about it
and thanks to its very good usability it is quickly surpassing emails’ and SMS’ exchanges.

Page 16 of 33 Edition 8.0 (01/03/2016)

Basic Computer course book Dr. Paolo Coletti

3.2.5. Search engines

A search engine is a special program running on a website which offers to the user the possibility of
searching other websites for specific web pages. The user needs to connect to the search engine website
and digit the keywords, or sometimes even a complete question, and the website returns the list of
relevant web pages.
Search engines use a crawler technique: they continuously go through the known web pages memorizing
their content and trying to discover other web pages through the contained links. In this way they are able
to memorize most of the WWW’s pages (more than 8 billion pages), even though some not linked websites
can remain unknown to search engines.
The most popular search engines are Google, the current market leader, Yahoo!
and Bing. In order to choose the order in which web pages are displayed to the
user, search engines use scoring system. The most famous one is Google’s
which relies on the idea that a linked page is very important and useful;
therefore a web page receives a score proportional to the number of web pages
which put a link to it. According to recent researches, the percentage of use of
these engines are Google 83%, Yahoo 6%, and Bing 4%.

There are many tricks to speed up the web search and arrive quickly to the right result:
 most novice users search the WWW using only a single keyword, which often produces the right
result but in some cases can result in long lists of wrong results, for example when looking for Java
Island using simply “java”. Using as many keywords as possible often avoids wrong results, even
though sometimes returns no pages if too many words are used;
 putting some words between quotation marks forces the search engine to look for the exact
phrase, i.e. exactly for those words in that order and with no words in between;
 in the advanced search menu often there are very good options, such as the search of pages only in
a specified language or only in a specified format, for example .doc or .pdf;

Edition 8.0 (01/03/2016) Page 17 of 33

Dr. Paolo Coletti Basic Computer course book

 when looking simply for some images, it is more convenient to use the specific search rather than
trying to find web pages containing them.

3.3. Internet connections

There are many different ways to connect to the Internet. Some are old technology, rather slow and used
right now only when no other means is available, such as the old telephone line with a speed of 56 Kbps,
the ISDN system, the GPRS and EDGE mobile phone systems. Modern technologies are called broadband:

Speed depends on
ADSL (Asymmetric Digital telephone line 500 Kbps in upload
subscription fee and
Subscriber Line) modem 8-20 Mbps download
network traffic
Optical fiber Special contract some Gbps
UMTS (Universal Mobile
Telecommunications System) 5 Mbps in upload Speed depends
3G 3G mobile phone 40 Mbps in strongly on
HSDPA (High Speed Downlink download environment
Packet Access)
LTE (Long Term Evolution) Depends on coverage
LTE mobile phone up to 100 Mbps
4G and contract
Wireless Speed depends on
wireless card 30-300 Mbps
Wi-Fi wireless generation
antenna in line of sight Speed depends
WiMAX 40 Mbps
modem strongly on distance
Page 18 of 33 Edition 8.0 (01/03/2016)
Basic Computer course book Dr. Paolo Coletti

Many fast connections, especially ADSL, suffer from network congestion: too many users are connecting at
the same time and the Internet provider’s main cables are not able to support the users’ maximum speed
multiplied by the number of users, and therefore must reduce the practical connection speed. Therefore
the maximum speed is often only theoretical and some providers are offering a “minimum band
guaranteed”: a minimum speed under which the connection may never fall.
Unfortunately, even in technologically advanced countries, there are still many areas where nor ADSL
neither UMTS arrives, mostly due to the geographic conditions (mountains, islands or long desert distances)
and to the low inhabitants’ density. This phenomenon is called digital divide: there are areas where
broadband connection does not arrive (8.8% of Italian families, while 16% of Italian companies do not have
access to 20 Mbps connections), and, on the other hand, Internet services and especially the WWW is
continuously going towards large size contents, cutting these people and companies off. In order to
overcome this social problem, WiMAX is spreading, a sort of very long range Wireless which arrives up to
10 Km but works only if the transmitting and receiving antennas are in line of sight and whose theoretical
speed of 70 Mbps decreases with distances to about 40 Mbps.

Edition 8.0 (01/03/2016) Page 19 of 33

Dr. Paolo Coletti Basic Computer course book

4. Computer security
Being connected to the Internet means giving anybody access to the computer. Despite the traditional
novice user’s belief that he is the one who goes outside, it is instead the Internet world which is coming
inside, with all its benefits and dangers. Knowing a little bit of security issues is nowadays necessary even to
the non-expert user, to avoid being lured into traps or adopting potentially dangerous behaviors.
Moreover, the recent Italian law 196/2003 on privacy issues contains in the Allegato B the minimal security
techniques which must be adopted by system administrators but also by normal users. This law
requirements apply clearly to all companies and professionals which handle data, but they also apply to
personal users who communicate data. To personal users who do not communicate data still the security
requirements to avoid data theft apply.
Law 196/2003 in particular splits data into:
 personal data
 sensitive data: data about race and ethnicity, religious / philosophical / political opinions, belonging
to religious / philosophical / political / workers organization
 sensitive data about health and sex
 justice data, which have the same prescriptions as sensitive data
 genetic data, which need extremely particular procedures which will not be described here.
Law 196/2003 prescribes that:
 each user must be authenticated by a personal username and a password or a biometric device or a
personal token;
 each user must have its own permissions, limited only to the data he needs for his work, and the
permissions must be revoked when the user does not need them anymore;
 users must receive specific training or instructions to be able to use their authentication and to be
aware of their responsibilities, duties and the possible dangers;
 all data must be backed up (see section 4.7 on page 31) at least every week;
 security software must be updated at least every year and or 6 months when handling sensitive
data;
 sensitive data receive special care: they must be stored and transmitted using encryption or the
people must be unidentifiable, for example by assigning to each person’s data a numeric code
instead of his name and surname.

4.1. Encryption
Encryption is a text masking technique, derived from military use, which transforms information in such a
way that it may be correctly read only with a special password called key. It uses two keys, a public key for
encrypting, usually known only to one computer or person, and a private key for decrypting, usually known
by all the computers or people which legitimately may read the information. The size of these keys, and
thus the difficulty to be guessed, is expressed in bits, with 128 bits being the typically most secure size
used.

The two following schemas illustrates how B, C and D can send secret messages using A’s public key .
The sent messages are encrypted and later decrypted by A with his private key . In case somebody

Page 20 of 33 Edition 8.0 (01/03/2016)

Basic Computer course book Dr. Paolo Coletti

intercepts a message, he is unable to decrypt it correctly since he does not have A’s private key , which
is known only to A. Even when somebody uses the public key to decrypt, it does not work.
The same process happens whenever a browser tries to send a password or secret information to a website
using a secure connection (see section 4.5 on page 29): the website tells the browser its public key and the
browser uses it to encrypt information which can be read only by the arriving website.

encrypt G#4hg! decrypt

message 1 message 1

f@çd*s decrypt
message 2 encrypt message 2

message 3 encrypt È^£(iw, decrypt message 3

message 1 encrypt G#4hg! decrypt Trb:-ò°§

message 2 f@çd*s decrypt Dr4^\|ò9

encrypt

message 3 encrypt È^£(iw, decrypt %$&/òL

Another analogous usage of encryption is to make stored data unreadable except by the owner. In this case
private and public keys coincides and are kept secret. The encryption and decryption process is done
automatically by a program (PDF creation programs or compression programs can do it, see page 11 for
instructions how to do it) or even by the operative system (if the entire disk is encrypted), which asks the
password to the user every time.

secret D(£ò§ secret

data encrypt *+]dH decrypt data

Edition 8.0 (01/03/2016) Page 21 of 33

Dr. Paolo Coletti Basic Computer course book

secret D(£ò§ %£)(“84

data encrypt *+]dH decrypt jhgds?ì

4.1.1. Digital signature

A digital signature, or electronic signature, is an encryption technique for documents which guarantees, at
the same time, the document’s author’s identity and that the document’s content has not been altered.
According to Italian law 82/2005, digital signature is equivalent to handwritten signature.
The two following schemas illustrate instead the usage of encryption for digital signature. A wants to
publish a publicly available document with its signature. It is sufficient for A to encrypt it with his private
key and all the users can try to decrypt it with A’s public key . If the result of decryption is
something readable, it means that the document was really encrypted with A’s private key and thus comes
from A; on the other hand, if the result is unreadable, it means that encryption was not done with A’s
private key. In this way, digital signature used in combination with PEC can guarantee also sender’s identity
and email’s content.

document

document G#4$h
encrypt decrypt
&à?-2y document

document

2?=zx:-ki

false Y&”:ò[
encrypt decrypt
document fgj?’^d 2?=zx:-ki

2?=zx:-ki

While encryption to receive secret messages or to hide information simply requires the user or the program
to create its own couple of private and public keys (programs, for example browsers, do this operation
automatically without the user’s intervention), for digital signature it is not so simple. Since everybody must
be sure that the public key is really the author’s public key, digital signature requires a certification
Page 22 of 33 Edition 8.0 (01/03/2016)
Basic Computer course book Dr. Paolo Coletti

authority to distribute private and public keys. Even though theoretically a simple password is enough, to
be sure that the user does not give the private password around, the certification authority gives him, after
having identified him through a governmental identity card, a password usually together with another
identification tool (a smart card, a telephone number for an OTP to be send), which, when used together,
correspond to his private key. An automatic signature program takes care of automatically encrypting
documents.
Several Italian public institutions are now using the national health care card
as a smart card and, using it as certification of user’s identity, offer access to
many services, even though they do not offer yet the digital signature of
personal documents. The service to digitally sign documents is offered by
private certification companies, with prices currently affordable also by
private users and with alternative devices such as smartcards or OTP devices
(see section 4.2.1 on page 25).

4.1.2. Keys expiration

The major drawback of encryption keys is that if a computer is put to work trying to encrypt a text with

many private keys in sequence and then to decrypt it with the correct public key , within some
years it will manage to find the right private key which leads to a correct encryption-decryption. Therefore,
each couple of private-public keys has a time limited duration, usually some years, after which it is
necessary to change them and encrypt again all the past documents.
Documents for which it is important to determine the exact date of the signature have moreover a
temporal mark signed directly by the certification authority.

4.1.3. Comparison with handwritten signature

Digital signature Handwritten signature
Needs keys from certification authority
Who can sign Everybody instantly
and proper tools
Who can verify Everybody (with proper tools) Handwriting analysts
Subjective in dubious cases, no time
Verification reliability Sure for some years
limit
Until other reliable signatures are
Temporal duration Some years (can be renewed)
available
Some seconds for all documents (with
Mass signatures Some seconds per document
proper tools)
Based on other subjective elements
Date reliability Objective if temporal mark
(paper’s and ink’s age)

4.2. Passwords
On the Intranet the user is identified only by his username, known to everybody, and his password, known
only to him. The password is what makes an unknown person an authenticated user, with all his privileges
and his identity’s responsibilities. If somebody else uses the right user’s password, for the Intranet this
other person is exactly the user. Law 196/2003 explicitly forbids users from giving their password to other
users, even when they are absent from work. These are some, often underestimated, malign actions a
passwords’ thief can do:
 steal personal information: the thief can read the user’s emails and personal information;

Edition 8.0 (01/03/2016) Page 23 of 33

Dr. Paolo Coletti Basic Computer course book

 steal privacy protected data: the thief can gain access to data about other people protected by
privacy, or read emails received from other people. The legal responsible of this privacy violation is
the thief as well as the user who did not protect other people’s data;
 steal money: the thief can find the user’s bank account numbers and passwords, sometimes
directly from the user’s web browser’s history;
 delete and modify data: the thief can delete user’s important data, or even worse he can modify
these data without the user’s knowledge (bank numbers, friend’s email addresses, degree thesis
content, add illegal pictures);
 steal identity: for the computer the thief is now the user, and therefore he can act to the outside
world exactly as if it were the user, for example answering to emails, subscribing to websites,
withdrawing from exams;
 start illegal activities: anybody who wants to start an illegal Internet activity will obviously use
somebody else identity, so he will not get into troubles when the activity is discovered.
Therefore it is absolutely necessary to keep passwords secret.
Unfortunately many people use very trivial passwords. This is the list
of the most common passwords in 2014: password, 123456,
12345678, 1234, qwerty, dragon, pussy, baseball, football, letmein,
monkey, 696969, abc123, 12345.

There exist automatic programs which are able to try 4 billion passwords each second, and they usually
start trying combinations of words and numbers (the complete set of all Italian, German and English words
can be tried in less than 1 second). Check on https://howsecureismypassword.net how much time does it
take to one of these programs to discover your easy passwords.
Law 196/2003 explicitly requires that password do have some features:
 change the password often, at least every six months (3 if sensitive data are handled);
 avoid words related to yourself, such as names, birth dates, birth places and addresses;
 use minimum 8 characters.
Moreover, other good procedures are:
 use as password a good mix of numbers, strange characters, small caps and capital letters, avoiding
any common word (other people’s names or words which can be found in a dictionary);
 use different passwords for different purposes. Unfortunately every website asks the user to
register with a password and users who use always the same password are giving it away to every
website they register, even untrustworthy ones. It is a good procedure to have at least three
passwords: one for important use (bank account), a second one for everyday use and a last one for
unimportant use (registering to unknown websites or to services that will not be used anymore).
 beware of passwords stored in programs: mail readers, Internet Explorer and many other programs
store your password masked with asterisks. They
seem to be unreadable, but computer experts can
reveal them instantly. Store passwords in programs
only if that computer has a single user (i.e. the home
computer or the personal laptop) or if access to that computer is on a username basis, but never in
public places such as an Internet café.

Page 24 of 33 Edition 8.0 (01/03/2016)

Basic Computer course book Dr. Paolo Coletti

4.2.1. Alternative password devices

Law 196/2003 gives the possibility to either replace the password authentification with other personal
devices or with biometric identification or to simply add these techniques to existing passwords.
Usually biometric identification is considered to
be very secure and thus it is used to replace
completely the password system. It can be
fingerprint recognition, hand palm blood vessels
recognition, eye’s retina scanning or voice
identification.
For very important activities, such as digital
signature or bank operations, usually a personal
device is instead added to the standard login
and password system. The usual password is
remembered personally by the user and a
personal device provides the second part of the
password. This device can be a smartcard, such
as the national health card, which is inserted
into a card reader or a USB token and they
provide to the program or web site the second
half of the password which is stored inside the
object. Alternatively the second part of the
password is a OTP One Time Password,
generated every time through a telephone call
to user’s mobile phone or displayed on a small
token (which can be either inserted or not
inserted in a USB plug) which is clearly
synchronized with the website for which
password is needed. This big advantage of this
second system is that, even if both parts of the
password are intercepted or guessed, the
second part can be used only that time and will
expire after a few seconds.

4.3. Viruses
From the Internet many unauthorized connection attempts arrive. Some of these are mistakenly authorized
and manage to reach the Intranet or at least to come in contact with programs which are behind the
firewall. If these connections carry malign intentions, usually their aim is to explore and use the Intranet
computers, to destroy Intranet data or to stop some Intranet services (which is a dangerous attack if these
services are managing stock trades or telephone calls). Defense against these kinds of attacks is in charge
system administrators.

Edition 8.0 (01/03/2016) Page 25 of 33

Dr. Paolo Coletti Basic Computer course book

While normal external attacks do not involve normal users, the virus is a special attack which arrives
directly on the user’s computer and must be prevented and stopped by him. The virus is a little program
which has this name because its life cycle is the same of a biological organism: survive and duplicate.
1. It arrives on the computer through email attachments, downloaded files, CDs and floppy disks or
directly from the Intranet. It is often hidden inside other good files or programs, which are called
infected. In the last years many free programs deliberately install small advertisement programs
without the user’s explicit consent; this kind of behaviors is considered borderline between a virus
and a way of financing the program’s development.
2. As soon as the user mistakenly runs it (often trying to run the good program or to open the good
file), the virus orders the computer to run itself every time the computer is turned on, thus assuring
its survival.
3. It starts duplicating itself, infecting other files, CDs and floppy disks, and trying to send itself around
by email or on the Intranet.
4. Most viruses are programmed to do damage to the computer and to the user, altering or deleting
files, sending emails with user’s personal data, preventing firewalls and antiviruses from running, or
turning the computer off. No viruses are known to be able to damage hardware.
Many names are used for viruses’ types according to their different behaviors.
 trojan horse is a virus which looks like a good program and, when downloaded and run by the user,
it performs the user’s wanted task but at the same time does other actions;
 key logger is a virus which records keyboard’s activity and then sends the keystrokes to its creator,
mostly to get user’s passwords;
 back door is a virus which opens a port on the computer to let external users in;
 adware is a virus which displays advertisement;
 spyware is a virus which spies user’s activity to get passwords or to target the user with specific
advertisement;
 ransomware is a virus which makes its
presence public and demands to the
user money to be removed,
threatening to damage him in a variety
of ways, such as encrypting files or
pretending to be an authority’s tool
and asking the payment of a fine, as
the famous Italian “Polizia di stato”
virus does.
These types are not exclusive: for example a Trojan horse which is at the same time a spyware and an
adware.
An infected computer can be recognized by some symptoms. These are the most frequent ones:
 when the computer is turned on, unwanted programs start, advertisement appears, and the
desktop presents some new bars or features which were not present nor installed before;
 the computer starts very slowly and unknown programs give strange operating system errors;
 commercial or pornographic web pages appear on the web browser without the user’s consent;

Page 26 of 33 Edition 8.0 (01/03/2016)

Basic Computer course book Dr. Paolo Coletti

 the analogical modem makes typical connection noises even when the computer is not connected
or the operating system asks the user to stop the current connection and start a new one to a
strange telephone number;
 the Task Manager window (see page 7) presents unknown programs.
Most of the time, a responsible user’s behavior it the best weapon against viruses: it protects him from
getting viruses, helps him removing them and prevents him from diffusing them. Responsible behavior
means:
 never open downloaded files and email attachments, especially when they come from a friend with
a text such as “please open it, urgent!”, since simulating to be a user’s friend is a typical virus
tactics. To open these files, save them on the desktop, check them with an antivirus and then open
them;
 do not insert in your computer CDs, DVDs and USB pendrives coming from other people or which
were inserted in other computers, unless you have an antivirus running or unless you scan them
immediately with an antivirus;
 avoid visiting strange websites, especially pornographic or hackers’ website, or websites which
open a lot of pop-up windows;
 have an antivirus always running or at least run an updated antivirus on your whole hard disks
every week (while Italian law currently prescribes minimum every 6 months); keep your antivirus
always up to date: more than 50 new viruses appear every week;
 keep communication programs and Microsoft products up to date. Microsoft and most software
companies offer free updates and automatic updating tools;
 beware of free programs which often try to install adware programs, asking the permission very
quickly during installation’s steps, relying on the novice user’s habit of clicking always “yes”.
To check the computer for viruses and to try to remove viruses from the computer, the user can run a
special program called antivirus. The antivirus basically has three possible different actions:
 it can scan all the storage devices (hard disks, the floppy disk inside the computer, the CD or DVD
inside the reader) for viruses. If a virus is found, it tries to remove it and to repair damaged files.
Some files can be unrecoverable. Complete devices scanning takes usually some hours;
 it can scan a single file or an entire directory for viruses. If there is an infected file, it tries to delete
the virus and repair it. Some files can be unrecoverable. Single file scanning takes some seconds;
 it can be always running. In this case, whenever a virus or a suspect file is run, the antivirus
prevents it from running and warns the user.
A lot of antivirus programs, free and commercial, exist. Their most important feature is obviously the
possibility to be constantly updated through the Internet.

4.4. Emails
4.4.1. Attachments
For viruses, email attachments are a first class way of traveling, since they are very often opened by users
without any precaution. Sometimes viruses hide inside files which were really sent by the sender, unaware
of having an infected computer. Other times a virus takes control of the mail reader program and sends
itself to the whole address book, counterfeiting the sender address (often using an address taken from the
address book) in order to avoid that the real infected computer be identified and to gain the thrust of the
receiver, and writing in the email text smart sentences pretending to be a regular friend of the receiver. The

Edition 8.0 (01/03/2016) Page 27 of 33

Dr. Paolo Coletti Basic Computer course book

arrival of this kind of email usually creates havoc, since the receiver is sure that the fake sender has a virus,
while the original infected computer is another one.
The basic rule is never open any attachment from the mail reader program. Save the attached files on the
desktop and run an antivirus program to check these files before opening them. Even when the email
comes from a friend: he cannot know that to have got a virus, or he can not be the real sender.

4.4.2. Spam
Spam messages are unsolicited unwanted bulk emails. They are unsolicited, meaning that the user did not
ask to receive them, they are unwanted, meaning that the user did not want to receive them, and they are
bulk, meaning that they are sent to millions of addresses. They are used mainly for four different purposes:
 advertisement emails are the most innocuous
version. The email message contains commercial
information usually on medicines, pornography,
software or investments. Sometimes these
messages are purposely written with orthographic
mistakes or with strange characters, to avoid being
intercepted by antispam programs;
 chain letters are electronic versions of letters
circulating in the XX century. They promise good
luck to anyone resending it and bad luck to anyone
trashing it, or they contain a sad story of an ill child
desiring postcards or an urgent warning about a
terrible virus: their content is probably false or too
old, and a search on the WWW will reveal this
immediately. Sending it around will probably cause
complains from other users;
 frauds are usually long letters proposing the user a
semi-legal bargain or a big lottery prize. Their only
aims are to get the user’s bank coordinates for
further illicit activities and to lure him into paying
small expenses hoping to get the promised
imaginary money;

Page 28 of 33 Edition 8.0 (01/03/2016)

Basic Computer course book Dr. Paolo Coletti

 phishing emails look as completely plausible

emails from banks, credit card companies or
website which handle money, asking the user
to enter their website to perform some
urgent actions. They often carry real logos,
seem to address to the correct website and
even cite the real website’s anti-phishing
campaign! However, this website address is a
trap, and the user will be sent to a false
website, who looks exactly like the original
one, whose only scope is to get passwords or
credit card numbers. Phishing has become a
big problem for Internet banking system, and
the user’s best defenses are entering any
crucial website always typing the address
directly in the web browser (never clicking on
addresses contained in emails) and calling
immediately his own bank at the telephone
whenever believing of having been victim of
phishing.
The best behavior to adopt against spam messages is to ignore them. Complaining is worthless, since their
sender address is always false; clicking on their links, especially if they suggest to click there to be removed
from their lists, usually has the only effect of letting the spammer know that the user’s address is really
read by someone.
The best ways to defend from spammers are to avoid using the user’s main email address during
registration in forums, newsgroups and unnecessary websites, and to avoid publishing it on the personal or
the company’s website. These are the places where spammers get their millions of addresses. If it is really
necessary, a good strategy is to have an alternative email address for registrations, which will receive all the
spam.
There are antispam programs, which put the supposed spam messages in a separate junk email folder, but
they are not completely reliable and sometimes they trash even good messages. These programs relies on
analysis of the email’s content and on blacklists, which contains the Internet mailservers which are
supposed to let spammers send their emails; it may happen that a good mailserver ends up into those
blacklists and that emails send from customers or employees of that Internet site are marked as spam by
other sites.

4.5. Navigation
Navigation is the second most dangerous Internet activity. It has more or less the same dangers as emails:
the user’s computer can get viruses if he does not run an antivirus before opening downloaded files, and
the user can be lured into phishing websites if he does not type personally the bank’s address in the web
browser. Moreover, the computer can get viruses even when simply visiting some websites, and therefore
two good suggestions are to avoid visiting strange (pornographic websites, websites with a lot of pop-up
windows and illegal websites) or untrustworthy websites and to keep Internet Explorer and Windows
operating system always up to date.

Edition 8.0 (01/03/2016) Page 29 of 33

Dr. Paolo Coletti Basic Computer course book

The other security problem while navigating is data interception. When connecting to a website, the user’s
data travels long distances, passing through a large number of computers (to connect from unibz.it to
www.athesia.it the data go to Padua, Milan and Bologna passing through at least 13 computers). Data on
the Internet travel without any protection, any computer administrator can read them. Therefore, when
sending passwords and other private data to a website, the user should take special care that the address
in the address bar starts with https:// (instead of http://) and on some browser a lock icon appears in the
lower right part of the windows, while on others the address bar becomes green with a lock: these
indications mean that the connection is secure (SSL) since data are traveling encrypted. Beware that the SSL
connection guarantees only that data are not intercepted and that the user is connected to the same
website from which he started the connection, while it does not guaranteed this website is the right one.

4.6. Attacks from outside

Any computer attached to the Internet, either directly through a modem or indirectly inside a LAN, is
subject to attacks from the outside WAN. The typical attack consists in external computers trying to gain
access to the computer using operating system known problems or hoping that the user is currently
running programs which open some computer’s parts to outside connections. From the user’s side, the
best defense is keeping the computer’s program always up-to-date, especially the operating system and
communication programs (as suggested in section 4.5 on page 29).
The most famous attack from outside, and the one from which it is very difficult to have an appropriate
defense, is the DoS Denial of Service attack. It is an attack which does not strike private users, but
companies offering services over the Internet. It consists in sending millions of incoming connections which
pretend to use the service but stay simply connected, in such a way to overcrowd the server and drain all
its resources (bandwidth, speed, memory) until the server crashes. The attacker clearly does not use his
own computer to carry on a DoS
attack, otherwise his computer
would probably crash before the
server, but uses computer of
unaware users around the world,
called zombies, which have been
hacked in the past days. In this way
the attacker has the power of
several dozen computers connected
from many different parts of the
world and at the same time it is
difficult to trace the responsibility
up to him.

4.6.1. Firewall
Often programs’ security breaches
once discovered need some days to
be fixed and somebody can take
benefit of them in this short time,
before the security update is

Page 30 of 33 Edition 8.0 (01/03/2016)

Basic Computer course book Dr. Paolo Coletti

installed on the user’s computer. Therefore on every LAN, usually in the point where the LAN connects to
the Internet, or more often on every computer a special program called firewall is running. The firewall
examines all the incoming and outgoing traffic, using the following analysis techniques:
 which internal program is originating/receiving the traffic,
 from/to which external address is the traffic originated/directed,
 what amount of traffic is passing from/to the same program to/from the same external address,
 which kind of data are passing.
Making an analysis of these data clearly slows down the connection but lets the firewall stop potential
unauthorized connection, putting them in a wait state until the user’s gives his approval or denial.
Windows Seven operating system comes with a firewall preinstalled, which lets the user customize which
kind of programs are allowed to make or receive connections and determine rules to approve or deny
automatically connections.

4.7. Backup
Backup is the process of copying important data to another location to prevent their loss. Sometimes
programs and even entire operating systems are copied, to be able to immediately continue working even
when a computer breaks. There are three very good reasons to do regular backups:
 against the user, who can accidentally delete some files or who can modify files and then change
his mind. Having a recent backup handy can often save hours of work;
 against the system, which can suddenly break due to hardware or software problems. Even hard
disks tend to be unreliable after some years of continuous activity. A recent backup saves the user
from redoing all the work of the previous months;
 against viruses and other users, which can delete and alter files: a backup can save a user coming
back from vacations.
Usually the operating system’s and the programs’ backup are done by system administrators: law 196/2003
explicitly requires an instantaneous backup for all sensitive data and that data are restored within 7 days in
case of loss. However, there are some files which should be taken in charge by the user himself:
 personally created data files, including all documents and images created by the user, and any
other file which is a result of the user’s personal work;
 in case emails are not handled with an online system: the contacts, calendar and the emails (mail
readers usually offer a way to save them into files to be used for backup);
 some programs require a lot of configuration and store their configuration in configuration files,
which are usually in the program’s directory;
 all the stuff which is difficult to find again, such as documents from other people or downloaded
from forgotten websites.
The place where the files are copied determines the reliability of the backup. It should be a large, cheap
and fast storage device. It should also be handy, since the typical problem with backup is that the user does
not takes time to do it regularly and, when the backup is too old, it is worthless. For home or simple office
users, the Friday morning backup is a good timing solution. Good storage devices to be used are:
 a second hard disk, used only for backup, which is very fast and very large and always ready to be
used;

Edition 8.0 (01/03/2016) Page 31 of 33

Dr. Paolo Coletti Basic Computer course book

 online backup systems, where user’s data are uploaded and are ready from anywhere in the world
(given a broadband connection), with Dropbox, Google Drive, Box and Amazon Cloud being the
most famous and offering some GB of space for free;
 USB pen drive, to be used only in emergency when no other appropriate storage device is available;
 big companies usually have special tape devices for backups.

4.7.1. RAID
A very popular backup solution is RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) technology, which consists
of several identical hard disks. There are different types of RAID implementations, which vary a lot in
functionalities and security.
JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) is a primitive form of RAID in
which all the disks are seen by the user simply as disks on
disk 1
which they can write as usual. The advantage is that the
available space is the sum of the space of all the disks, file user decides
however there is no form of data protection: if a disk breaks,
disk 2
anything on that disk is lost.

RAID0 uses two identical disks which are seen by the user as a
single disk. Every time he writes a file, the first part of the file
file
is written on the first disk while the second on the second disk 1
part 1
this. This strategy has the big advantage that writing speed
doubles, with a total available space which is the sum of the file
size of the two disks. But if a disk breaks, all the content of part 2 disk 2
both disks is lost, since the user will lose half of all the files.

RAID1 is the most common implementation of RAID. It uses

two identical disks but the user sees only the first one. The
disk 1
second disk is simply an identical and instantaneous copy of
the first one. The disadvantage is that the speed does not file
improve and the available space is the size of one disk only,
but in case a disk breaks, no file is lost since the other one is disk 2
its identical copy. This is a very good backup solution to
protect data against physical failure, especially suited for 24h
services. However, it is not a backup solution against viruses
or user’s incidental cancellations, since any modification on
the first disk is immediately performed on the second one.

Page 32 of 33 Edition 8.0 (01/03/2016)

Basic Computer course book Dr. Paolo Coletti

RAID10 is an overlay of RAID1 and RAID0. It uses four disks,

writing files on the first and on the third as if they were on file
part 1 disk 1
RAID0 and then duplicating their content on disks two and
four. This technique has the speed of RAID0, the reliability of
RAID1, but gives the user a space equivalent to the sum of
two disks sizes, while four disks are effectively used. disk 3

file
part 2 disk 2

disk 4

All the RAID techniques are good at either improving the speed or improving the reliability against
hardware failure, but are not good against other threats and therefore they must always be coupled with
another form of backup, such as tape backup for large companies or weekly/daily copy on DVD or on
another hard disk for home users.

Edition 8.0 (01/03/2016) Page 33 of 33