Virus-

This is one of the terms that is normally familiar to everyone, but very few understands what exactly it means. Most know that viruses are bad and can be damaging to their computer, but that is the extent of the knowledge.

A computer virus is program that multiplies itself on computer systems and incorporates itself into shared programs. Some viruses are harmless pranks, and others can destroy computer files or disable a computer entirely. A key quality of viruses is that they spread quickly, from user to user.

Viruses are most commonly spread through e-mail. Certain viruses use personal e-mail address books to send the damaging programs from computer to computer. To prevent against receiving an unwelcome virus, do not open any e-mail attachments from people that you do not know.

Most, if not all, Internet Service Providers offer some kind of protection from Viruses within the structure of the Internet connection. If you use the Internet frequently, you might also want to invest in an additional Virus scanning program, such as McAffee VirusScan or Norton Anti-Virus.

Although both Macintosh and Windows run computers are subject to viruses, there are a greater number of Windows viruses.

Viral-

This term was originally coined to describe viral marketing, but the adjective has expanded to refer to any practice that moves a product from person to person.

The ease of passing information on to others with e-mail addresses has made it possible for information, videos and graphics to spread like wildfire through the Internet community. There are viral videos, viral jokes, viral hoaxes, etc.

Username/ User ID-

A synonym for “login name” or “handle.”

URL-

The term URL refers to “Uniform Resource Locater.” This is the technical term for any web address that you’d type into the address bar of your web browser.

Using a URL will take you directly to the website you are looking for. When someone asks for the URL of a website, they want the full address. The basic format of a URL is www.websitename.com, although suffixes like “.net,” “.org,” and “.biz” are growing in popularity and use.

The term URL is either pronounced with each letter said (Yoo Are Ell) or as an acronym (“Ural”).

Trojan-

A Trojan Horse computer virus gets it name from the infamous legend of the same name. Just like the Trojans were fooled into letting opposing forces in their gates, a Trojan Horse virus is sneaky. This type of virus disguises itself as a helpful program.

Normally, a Trojan virus is distributed in this way:
-A user downloads a program from the Internet because they think it may be useful.
-Once the program is opened (run) on the user’s computer, the virus is released. Commonly the virus will erase the hard drive or destroy parts of the computer.
-Sometimes a Trojan will hide on the computer undetected, and slowly start transforming files and documents. This way the user does not know how or where they downloaded the virus.

Tracking-

Online businesses use tracking to tell whether or not their advertising, copywriting and web site design are converting to sales. The key to success for any online business is driving targeted traffic to the website through pay per click advertising, exchanging links, exchanging banners and using SEO techniques.

However, these techniques are useless if a business owner does not know if they are working. Tracking is one of the most powerful strategies for increasing sales and opt-in subscriptions. Tracking is measuring the effectiveness of each source of advertising.

Using advertising link tracker software is one of the quickest methods to track where customers are coming from. The software measures the number of clicks that are received on individual advertisements and then the sales or subscriptions garnered from those clicks.

Traffic-

Internet traffic is the term used to refer to user activity on a web site. Each time someone visits a web page, an entry is automatically registered on the web page server’s log file. The log file records the number of times that a piece of information has been requested from the server. This request is commonly referred to as a “hit.”

The web hosting service will provide summaries of activities on the site. Keeping track of the traffic that a website receives is an important part of measuring whether the website marketing and content is working.

TOS-

An anagram for Terms of Service. They are the rules by which one must agree to abide by in order to use a service. In order to use an online service, you are required to read and agree to the terms of service.

TLD (Top Level Domain)-

This is the highest level of the domain name, and appears at the end of the domain name. While “.com” is the most popular TLD, here are a few others:

.edu
.gov
.net
.org

TLDs are also available in the form of country codes (“.us.”, “.de”, etc).

Thread-

A topic thread is a string of consecutive message posting to newsgroups, mailing lists or forums. Threads can be organized in ascending or descending order based on the date posted. Open threads are blog posts that allow readers to comment and discuss topics relevant to the blog.

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