Staying Safe When You Go Online
Between hackers, scammers and online predators, maintaining your personal security online can be a challenge. That said, employing a few simple strategies whenever you go online can help to ensure the continued safety of your computer, your personal information and your family. After enough practice, you won’t even have to think about staying safe online anymore.
Securing Your Computer
Any level of security online starts with the computer you use to browse the Internet. For best results, follow the FBI’s advice and:
- Don’t turn off your firewall
- Do update your virus protection software when updates become available
- Don’t use an outdated operating system that can’t protect against modern threats
- Do stay vigilant about what files you download onto your computer from Internet sites
- Don’t leave your computer running 24/7, as this can allow hackers to access your computer when you aren’t using it.
In addition to securing your computer, it’s also critical to consider how you’ll access the Internet. While the unsecured wireless connection at a diner may make it convenient to answer your friend’s email, using this type of connection could allow others to intercept the information you transmit to sites or send via email.
Crafting Clever Passwords
While conventional wisdom and common sense may dictate never to use your child’s name, your birthday or the word ‘password’ as your password, it still happens for more often than it should. Generally, the strongest passwords are usually longer than eight characters and contain at least one:
- Uppercase letter
- Lowercase letter
- Number
- Symbol or special character.
If you haven’t used strong passwords before to maintain security online, you may believe crafting and remembering these types of passwords is difficult. It doesn’t have to be. You can pick a lengthy word or phrase you’ll remember and make simple substitutions. For instance, ‘I love pizza’ could become ‘1lovePizz@’ when you substitute a symbol and number for the letters they most closely resemble.
Remember, it’s stronger to intersperse your numbers and symbols throughout the text than it is to tack them onto the end of text.
Limiting What You Post
When it comes to your family’s security online, being mindful of what information you share is key. As a parent, there’s nothing wrong with being proud of your child’s accomplishments or wanting others to see how adorable they look in their uniform. If you know every single person in your social media network of choice and you have everything locked down to avoid accidental sharing to the public, you’re already ahead of the game.
In order to protect your children, try to avoid sharing detailed information about their school and extracurricular activity schedule. In the wrong hands, the picture of what your child is wearing to school that day coupled with the name of their school and what time they’ll be walking home is disastrous – especially when you’re a little fuzzy about how you know certain social media friends.
It can also be helpful to turn off the location settings on mobile social media sites so that your unrelated post doesn’t accidentally give away the location of your child’s school or your work address. Simply being mindful of how the information you’re sharing could be used in the wrong hands can help you improve your security online.