Suppose you check your e-mail and find a message from someone at Microsoft.com. The message body is

Fantastic news! We've Found the answer you've been seeking!

Question:

Suppose you check your e-mail and find a message from someone at Microsoft.com. The message body is as follows:

As a user of Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Corporation provides you with this upgrade for your Web browser. It will fix some bugs found in your Internet Explorer. To install the upgrade, please save the attached file (ie0199.exe) in some folder and run it.

What should you do? Explain your answer.

2. Why is it reasonable for e-stores to want your e-mail address? What do they do with it?

3. What three things should you look for when you examine a site certificate?

4. What is one-click shopping? Where is personal information stored for one-click shopping.

5. What types of companies are likely to ignore industry guidelines when an industry is self-regulating?

6. Explain the difference between private-key and public key encryption. Is one better than the other? Explain your answer.

7. 5) What does it mean to crack a key by brute force? Explain the process and why it can take a long time.

8. If you want to place a digital signature on a document meant for me, do you need your own key apir? Do you use my public key or your own private key?

9. Explain how hash codes are used to protect passwords and passphrases.

10. Explain how a man-in-the-middle attack works. Is it possbile to set up a man-in-the-middle attack without breaking the law?

11. Explain how people use digital fingerprints in connection with public keys. When are they useful?

12. Explain how the web of trust works to solve the problem of key authentication.

13. What is a certificate authority (CA)? Explain why a system of CAs is better than the web of trust for e-commerce. When is the web of trust still a useful model of key authentication.

14. If your credit card information is stolen on the Net, is the reason likely to be that someone broke a weak encryption code or something else? Explain your answer.

15. What is the difference between weak encryption and strong encryption? Why does the dividing line between them change over time?

16. Which two file extensions tell a Web browser to display a file as a Web page?

17. Explain why you should always include HEIGHT and WIDTH attributes for an image file even if you don't need to scale the original image.

18. What text type selection reproduces text exactly as it is typed, preserving all white spaces and blank lines?

19. Explain the difference between a "404 Not Found" error and an "access denied" error.

20. Why should you never specify a bitmap (.bmp) file as an image to be placed on a Web page?

21. How do you feel about spyware? Do you think this is a fundamentally unfair business practice, or do you think it's the consumer's responsibility to research software using resources like SpyChecker? Do you think spyware is in the same category as cookies? Explain why or why not. How hard do you think consumers should work to protect their online privacy?

22. Research the Children's Online Priacy Protection Act and summarize its contents. Do you think this law is accomplishing what it set out to accomplish? Try to find some statistics to back up your arguments.

23. Suppose you had a time machine and you could go back to January 1, 1991, and talk to Phil Zimmerman. At this time Phil was planning to release PGP, but PGP was not yet ready for public consumption. If you could go back in time to talk to Zimmerman about PGP, would you encourage him to go ahead with his plans or would you discourage him? What facts about our world today could you tell him to strengthen your argument? Do you think that the world would be a better place or a worse place without PGP?

24. Explain what is meant by the saying "When privacy is outlawed, only outlaws will have privacy."

25 Fan fiction is fiction written by amateurs that features characters from commercial novels, movies, TV shows, and popular culture in new situations or adventures (sometimes called FANZINES). Many Web sites feature stories and entire books that fall into the fan fiction genre. Some authors believe that all fan fiction qualifies as derivative works and should be deemed illegal. The people who write fan fiction believe that they are protected under the doctrine of fair use. Visit http://www.chillingeffects.org/fanfic/faq.cgi and find out how different companies are responding to the fan fiction phenomenon.

26. As a rule, if you take a photograph, you own that photograph and you can publish it on the Web. However, if the photograph contains recognizable faces of people, a number of issues arise with respect to privacy rights. Moreover, if the person depicted is famous, legal complications can arise based on the "Right to Publicity." Search the web for guidelines used by journalists, movie producers, advertisers, and newscasters. What guidelines do you think a Web page author should follow?