Computer Internet Questions and Answers

Answer: D

Correct answer: None of these

Ctrl + R right-aligns the selected paragraph in Word. Refreshing a page is a browser command, and closing a window is Ctrl + W.

Answer: B

Correct answer: A small piece of data a website stores in the browser

A cookie is a small piece of data a site asks the browser to store and to send back with every subsequent request to that site. It exists because HTTP is stateless: the server remembers nothing between requests, so a cookie is what allows it to recognise a returning visitor. That is how a login persists, how a shopping basket survives navigation, and how preferences are remembered. They are classified in useful ways. A session cookie lasts until the browser closes; a persistent one has an expiry date. A first-party cookie belongs to the site being visited; a third-party cookie belongs to another domain embedded in the page, which is what allows advertisers to track a user across sites - and what privacy regulation such as the GDPR addresses. A cookie is inert data, not a program, so it cannot itself be a virus.

Answer: D

Correct answer: To allow page headers and footers to appear on document when it is printed

A header or footer is a page feature: what is placed there repeats on every page and is printed with it. That is what distinguishes it from ordinary text typed at the top of the first page.

Answer: A

Correct answer: A system that filters network traffic according to security rules

A firewall inspects traffic crossing a network boundary and permits or blocks it according to a configured policy. It may be hardware or software, and it controls access rather than detecting malicious content, which is the separate job of antivirus and intrusion detection.

Answer: A

Correct answer: It encrypts traffic and hides the user’s IP address from the sites visited

A VPN, or Virtual Private Network, creates an encrypted tunnel between the user’s device and a server operated by the VPN provider. Traffic emerges from that server, so sites see the server’s IP address rather than the user’s, and anyone observing the local network sees only encrypted traffic to a single destination. Its two established uses are remote access - letting an employee reach an office network as though present - and protecting traffic on untrusted networks such as public Wi-Fi. It generally makes a connection slower rather than faster, since traffic travels further and must be encrypted and decrypted; the second option inverts this. Its privacy protection is also limited and worth stating plainly: it moves trust from the internet provider to the VPN provider, who can see the same traffic. It does not make a user anonymous, since cookies and logins identify them regardless of address.

Answer: B

Correct answer: To quickly jump to a specific location in the document

A bookmark names a place so that it can be returned to with Go To, and so that cross-references and hyperlinks elsewhere in the document can point at it.

Answer: A

Correct answer: An attempt to obtain sensitive information by impersonating a trusted party

Phishing is a fraud in which the attacker impersonates a bank, employer or service to induce the victim to reveal passwords, card numbers or other sensitive information - usually through an email or message linking to a convincing fake site. It is an attack on the person rather than on the system, which is why technical defences alone are insufficient and why it remains the commonest route into an organisation. The variants are worth naming. Spear phishing is targeted at a specific individual using details gathered about them. Whaling targets senior executives. Vishing uses voice calls and smishing uses text messages. The practical defences are checking the sender’s actual address rather than the display name, hovering over a link to read its real destination, never following a link to log in, and above all enabling two-factor authentication, which makes a stolen password insufficient on its own.

Answer: C

Correct answer: Google

Google is a search engine: a service that indexes web pages and returns those matching a query. Bing, DuckDuckGo and Yahoo are others. The distractors are each a different kind of software, and the confusion between them is exactly what the question tests. Chrome is a web browser, the program that fetches and displays pages - and although it defaults to Google search, the two are distinct products. Windows is an operating system. Gmail is a webmail service. A search engine works in three stages: a crawler follows links to discover pages, an indexer builds a searchable structure from their content, and a ranking algorithm orders the results. Google’s original contribution was PageRank, which judged a page’s importance by the pages linking to it. The part of the web reachable this way is the surface web; content behind logins and forms is the deep web.

Answer: A

Correct answer: Delivering computing services over the internet rather than from local hardware

Cloud computing delivers computing resources - servers, storage, databases, software - over the internet from a provider’s data centres, rather than from hardware the user owns and maintains. Its three service models are worth knowing. IaaS supplies raw infrastructure, virtual machines and storage, leaving the operating system and everything above to the customer. PaaS supplies a platform on which to run applications without managing the servers. SaaS supplies finished software over the web - Gmail and Google Docs are examples. The deployment models are public, private, hybrid and community. The attraction is that capacity can be added and removed on demand and paid for by use, turning a capital cost into an operating one and removing the need to size hardware for peak load. The concerns are dependence on a provider, the difficulty of moving between them, and the legal question of where data physically resides.

Answer: D

Correct answer: It forwards data between different networks along the best available path

A router connects different networks and forwards packets between them, choosing a path using a routing table and the destination IP address. It is what makes an internet of networks possible. The other devices in the same family operate at different layers, and the set is worth learning together. A hub repeats an incoming signal to every port indiscriminately - obsolete and wasteful. A switch forwards a frame only to the port where its destination MAC address lives, which is why switched networks are far more efficient. A repeater amplifies a signal to extend range, the second option here. A modem converts between digital and analogue for transmission over a telephone or cable line, the third. A home router usually combines several of these - router, switch, wireless access point and often modem - in one box, which is why the term is used loosely.