Good and Bad Computer Practise
by Jaydot
Develop good computer discipline, and your system will stay up indefinitely. Adopt bad computer practise, and your system is in danger of falling apart at the seams.
Logging In
Good Practise - Login to a user account. There is rarely a need to login to root. On the rare occasion that there is, before you login, be sure that you have removed the Ethernet cable so that the machine is isolated from outside.
Bad Practise - Many people are under the impression that they are safe to go on line logged into root if they have booted a LiveCD. Not so. The LiveCD gives you access to the hard drive. If you have access, so too does the hacker and by being in root you give the hacker access to your entire network. You may argue that you have only one machine and that it is virgin territory, so what does it matter?
Virus, Trojan, worm, root-kit: heard of these?
When you go on line logged into root, the hacker can leave one of these presents on your hard drive, and you would never know it. You could install your shiny new PCLOS release, set it all up just how you like it and one day, phut! Your system may not boot, perhaps the hard drive is inaccessible and you cannot login. So many horrible things can happen. Perhaps the worst of these is a hacker hi-jacking your system and using any personal information they can find in myriad nefarious ways. When you login to root and go on line, you give your machine away.