Protecting Children Online Steps Toward Making Your Computer "Weirdo-Proof" It's an unfortunate fact of reality, but children are the most victimized computer users on the Internet today. The good news is that there are some practical steps you can take to protect your children from sexual predators, hackers, and other seedy individuals who want to cause harm. Understanding Operating Systems Every new computer that's brought home from the store has an operating system installed onto it. But what most new computer users don't realize, is that without an operating system, that computer would be a simple shell of possibilities. A powered computer lacking an operating system wouldn't display anything more than a bunch of confusing text messages that describe the computer's boot process. No harm could ever come from seeing an extension, but plenty could be learned from it. Fortunately you have this article to guide you through some of the most common extensions that you'll run into. But before you can see file extensions, you need to turn them on. From Windows Explorer, click on the "Tools" menu, and select "File Options. exe extension, take note that although the file is compressed, it's typically a file that will install a program onto a computer. .Zip or .Sit files don't install software - they merely archive a collection of them into one, or they significantly reduce the size of a larger one. Decompressing Files Assuming that you have Winzip or StuffIt installed on your computer, you can access the files archived inside a . All Windows systems include the two text editors, "NotePad," and "WordPad." Notepad is a plain text editor while WordPad is a rich text editor. Both files are capable of opening plain text, however WordPad can open Windows Write files (an earlier version of WordPad) as well as rich text files. Think back to the last time that you paid a bill over the phone. Instead of speaking to a human being, chances are that you spoke to a computer that not only responded to what you said and followed the commands that you gave it, it also asked you for more information such as your full name or credit card number.