There are many different search engines to use that will find sites for you to visit. Here are just a few of them to start you off.

When necessary, we post bulletins and advisories on our main page. Consequently, it's advisable to make Provide.Net your default starting page.

In Internet Explorer, go to "view" (it may also be under "tools") and then "internet options", and then change the "homepage address" (on the general tab) to read http://www.provide.net.

If you're running Netscape, go to "edit" and select "preferences", and change the "homepage" to read http://www.provide.net.

There are also a number of programs available that will allow you to "lockout" certain sites so that children will not be able to access them. For more information see Yahoo's directory of filtering software. Please keep in mind that Provide.Net will not provide technical support for these programs.

According to spychecker.com, "Spyware is Internet jargon for Advertising Supported software (Adware). It is a way for shareware authors to make money from a product, other than by selling it to the users. There are several large media companies that offer them to place banner ads in their products in exchange for a portion of the revenue from banner sales. This way, you don't have to pay for the software and the developers are still getting paid. If you find the banners annoying, there is usually an option to remove them, by paying the regular licensing fee."

Spyware might cause some problems with your Internet connection by making it slower, dialing when not wanted, or even changing settings in Dial-up Networking. However, there are some tools out there to check your system for spyware. One tool that Provide.Net recommends is called Ad-Aware. You can go to their site here and download their software to check your own system for spyware.

For information about what a virus is and what it can do, check this website out. McAfee and Symantec also have information regarding viruses.

If you think you might have a virus, Provide.Net recommends that you visit housecall.antivirus.com. They offer a free online virus scan.

Viktor Mayer-Schönberger wrote a great article entitled "The Cookie Concept" that describes what a cookie is and what it does.

We don't always recommend that you delete all of your cookies since some of them might contain some useful information for sites visited often. However, some cookies might cause a problem or two. If you are experiencing problems, you might want to delete your cookies or possibly just the ones that you don't recognize. You can find your cookies in the "cookie" folder. Just do a search for "cookie" in Windows to locate your folder. From there, you may open the folder and sift through the files for the cookie(s) you are looking for. The same program we recommend for spyware, Ad-Aware, also has some built in functionality for deleting cookies. You can get it here.

For anyone who has browsed the Internet, they are probably familiar with Pop-up or a Pop-under windows. Pop-ups and Pop-unders are more of a nuisance than anything else. They are Internet browser windows that "pop-up" in front of your current browser window or they "pop-under" your browser window. Some sites will pop-up a window which then pops-up another window which in turn pops-under another window... Before you know it, you have 10 browser windows open without having clicked on a single hyper-link.

There are programs out there that can eliminate pop-ups and pop-unders, but they might also limit your browser's functionality. For a good listing of programs, go to providenet.tucows.com. Do a search on that site to find a program that will work for you.