Introduction

Blaine Burnham has two computers at his home. One is hooked to the Internet. The other is not. Never is one linked to the other. To move material between them he uses a floppy disc, a tool that is almost old-fashioned these days. The computer that has never been tainted by an Internet connection is used to keep Burnham's personal finances and other information he'd rather not let slip into the hands of marketing spies who routinely collect information from Internet-linked computers in U.S. homes. That one is also used for take-home work from his job. A floppy is used to carry the work from office to home and back.

Burnham's caution is born of years of researching and teaching computer security. He's the director of the Nebraska University Consortium on Information Assurance, an arm of the University of Nebraska's Peter Kiewit Institute of Information Science, Technology and Engineering. Burnham and five other consortium employees talked recently about what home users face in trying to keep their personal computers from becoming public property. Answering questions were Burnham; assistant director Alex Nicoll; and researchers Matt Myers, Steve Nugen, Matt Payne and Tim Vidas.

Dangers of the Internet

Q. Do many people go to the lengths Blaine does, keeping two computers and isolating one of them from the Internet?

Nicoll: By and large, no. Most people don't even do the simplest things to protect themselves, to say nothing of running two computers.

Q. What are the dangers of the ... Read More