WORLD COMMUNITY GRID

 COMPUTER SECURITY & USE

Frequently Asked Questions

 How does it all work?

Making a difference has never been easier! Grid technology is simple and safe to use.

In order for research to be run on World Community Grid, large research projects are divided into many small, individual pieces of work. To start participating as a member, you download and install a small software program onto your computer. When idle, your computer will request data on one of those specific units of work from World Community Grid's server. Your computer will then perform computations on this data, send the results back to the server, and ask the server for a new piece of work. Each computation that your computer performs provides scientists with critical information that accelerates the pace of research!

What research will my computer be working on?

 World Community Grid contributes computing power to projects that benefit humanity. World Community Grid receives research proposals from public and not-for-profit organizations, and accepts projects after they are reviewed by our world-class Advisory Board.

Currently three projects are in process, Help Defeat Cancer, FightAIDS@Home, and Human Proteome Folding - Phase 2. Completed projects include Human Proteome Folding - Phase 1 and Smallpox Research.

 How much of my time will it take?

 Installation of the grid software program and registration should take less than 10 minutes of your time. After that, sit back and know that you are doing something by doing nothing.

Once you are registered, you may go back to the website and check the status of the projects, join a team with friends, and participate in the forums. However, it is not required for you to do any of these.

Will this slow my computer down?

 No, the World Community Grid software program does not compete with any work that needs to be done by your computer. It is set to run its work at the lowest priority, so your computer has the available resources to run everything else on your computer first. Normally this permits the program to use all of the free time available on the machine without any performance interference.

 Won’t this cause a lot of wear & tear on my computer?

No. The software runs only at the lowest priority and you can customize World Community Grid to run only when the screen saver kicks in. There is no need to change your behavior with your computer, such as leaving it on all the time. The grid software is smart enough to start back up at the same place that it left when you shut the computer down.

What about the energy cost to keep my computer running?

 Since the software uses the spare resources on your computer, it will cause the computer to use slightly more in electricity, and therefore you may see a slight increase in your electricity costs. The increase will vary depending on the conditions where you live, but in most places, the impact will be the equivalent of an additional low-watt light bulb. If these costs are a concern, you can limit the times that World Community Grid will operate by updating your device preferences, which are located in your member profile on the website. Another option is to open the World Community Grid program and select that it runs only as a screen saver.

The net societal benefit of the use of World Community Grid far outweighs the minimal additional energy that may be drawn from the idle workstations. The power of World Community Grid enables researchers to complete computations in weeks instead of years and bring new, exciting innovations and solutions to health and environmental issues that affect our communities, our global neighbors and the environment.

My computer doesn’t have much memory. Will I have problems?

 If your computer has a relatively small amount of real memory, you may experience a slow down in executing other applications. World Community Grid give s you the option to make the program run only as a screen saver and the option to specify the program’s schedule for each day of the week. Only at the times specified is it allowed to run and to communicate with the server. In addition, there is a snooze option, which lets you stop processing for a specified number of minutes. Be sure to check the system requirements on the website to see if your computer meets the requirements. Each research project we run on the World Community Grid has different minimum machines requirements.

How much space is this going to take up on my computer?

Memory usage is minimal, but it depends on the type of computer that you have and how it is configured. Various research projects require different amounts of computer resources. The types of resources required from your computer including memory and disk space are also posted in system requirements. Memory is used to store the executables, which is the input and output data for the project. This information is encrypted for security as are the other files.

Wait, this is sounding a lot like SETI@Home.

 SETI@Home uses the same type of technology, grid computing, and is hosted by the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California , Berkeley . However, the large difference between SETI@Home and World Community Grid is the research being conducted. SETI is an acronym for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and SETI@Home aims to find intelligent life outside earth. World Community Grid’s purpose is to tackle projects that benefit humanity such as cancer and AIDS research.

This sounds too good to be true. Am I missing something?

Everything is on the level. Members who volunteer their unused computing power benefit by not only making their computers more productive, but also by helping make scientific inroads on humanitarian problems. Research organizations benefit by having grid computing available to them at no cost, enabling them to make more effective use of critical funds. The people of the world benefit because humanitarian research is advanced, and the results are shared because they are made available in the public domain.

What are the points that I get for donating my computer time and what are they used for?

 Points are accumulated each time your computer completes a work unit, and they are used for competitive comparison on the statistics page. The points measure your contribution to individual research projects running on World Community Grid.

 What are teams? Do I need to join a team?

Teams provide a way for individuals to get together and engage in a little friendly competition. Joining a team is entirely optional, but helps motivate us to keep improving and growing the grid.

Once you become a member of World Community Grid, you can participate in teams by going to the My Grid page and then selecting My Team. You can either join a team or Create a New Team. When you are on a team, you can compete with other teams for number of members on a team, total run time, points, and results returned. Joining a team does not affect your individual member statistics.

 What is the screen saver? What if I want to use another screen saver?

 If you are running the United Devices software, the screen saver demonstrates graphically the piece of research that your computer is working on. Depending on what project your computer is working on, the screen saver will look different. For information regarding a specific screen saver, please click here. (link with screen saver needs to be updated with FAAH and HPF2)

Currently, project screensavers are not available with the BOINC software but will be available in the future.

 To turn off or change the screen saver, click on [Start] [Settings] [Control Panel], and then double click on [Display]. Click on [Screen Saver]. Use the drop down menu to either change the screen saver or shut it off by selecting [None].

 SECURITY QUESTIONS

 What about viruses?

World Community Grid does not open up any doors for viruses to enter your computer. Your computer, rather than the server, always initiates any contact. Because the program on your computer does not accept incoming connections, incoming attacks on your computer would be extremely difficult. In fact, with the hundreds of thousands of computers currently running World Community Grid, there has never been a successful incoming attack. Furthermore, your computer must be known to World Community Grid's server, otherwise its communication is rejected until it is properly registered.

What about the privacy of my files? Will World Community Grid take private information from my computer and send it to the server or others?

The World Community Grid software only sends result files from the science application back to the server. The software is only concerned with files that are located in its specific directory on your computer where it installed the software. Files outside of that directory are never looked at by the World Community Grid software.

Will my personal privacy be compromised?

 No. No personally identifiable information is required to run World Community Grid’s agent. Participants do not need to provide World Community Grid with any personal information after downloading to run World Community Grid’s agent. We do request your e-mail address in case you forget your password and we need to resolve that. Some location information is required to have volunteers’ points and processing time included on some statistics pages on the web site. Members can choose to allow World Community Grid to include them on updates and information on the progress of World Community Grid research. Members are told every instance where their e-mail addresses might be used and are given the option to allow or disallow specific e-mail uses.

 How do I know that this is secure?

World Community Grid performs security audits led by IBM security experts to prevent security breaches and expose any attempted attacks. If any security exposures are discovered during the audits, they are immediately repaired. The Security Audit focus areas include: the physical security of the Boulder , Colorado hosting site; all United Devices software; World Community Grid’s grid and web servers and their software; the research application software, and any software used in World Community Grid’s research projects. Periodically, ethical hackers employed by IBM are used to examine the software and attempt to find security vulnerabilities.

The servers are hosted at a high-security IBM hosting site located in Boulder , Colorado that is used for critical business applications. Extensive IBM-established corporate security procedures are followed for all aspects of security. Physical access to the servers is controlled via biometric access controls. Several layers of firewalls are used to permit only the particular communication types required outside and among the machines involved. Furthermore, multiple authentication layers are required to gain access to the servers. All of the servers are continually monitored for any anomalies, all of which are carefully investigated.

I still have questions.

 Additional in-depth questions and answers are available in the Help section.

Experienced volunteers are anxiously waiting to help answer your questions. You may submit your specific question in the World Community Grid Forums to be answered by one of our experienced volunteers.