Computersight -

In the digital age most of us; if not all of us depend on the internet to get us through the day, some jobs are even 100% online. Well sometimes the internet isn’t all that great, and might be infected with malicious files. Luckily, there is a way to defend yourself against the internet terrorists of the digital age.

Online Accounts

The number of online account can really affect the chances of your accounts being hacked and your identity possibly stolen. If someone steals your identity and commits a certain crime in your name, it is possible that you could be the one that ends up behind bars, and none of us want that to happen.

There is a simple way to keep your online accounts secure. If you don’t use the same password for every online account you have, imagine this. One day your computer is infected with malware. If the hacker behind the malware can find out one of your online passwords before you get the malware removed, that person would have access to all of your online accounts because you used the same password for every account.

Though using the same password for every account you create can be helpful for you because you won’t have to remember what the password is for every account, it can also be a security threat. There are some very simple ways you can stop this bad habit.

1.       If you don’t have a lot of online accounts, use a series of passwords and rotate them between accounts. This way it would be harder for someone to hack into your accounts, and your account could even be temporarily suspended from too many log in attempts.

2.       Using a password keeper is an excellent way to create multiple passwords, and most of them even have password generators built into them. Even though it might be a little bit annoying to have to copy and paste passwords all the time to log in, it could really be a life saver. You wouldn’t necessarily have to create a generated password for all of your accounts, just the ones you couldn’t afford to get hacked like your bank account of PayPal account. You can download a free password keeper by going here http://keepass.info/. This password keeper can even go onto a USB stick which would be the most secure way to store your passwords.

Spam

Spam is another way internet hackers gain control of people’s computers and lives. There are some very simple ways you can tell if an email message is spam.

·         Contains mostly links and is in plain text.

·         Comes from a free email service like Gmail or Yahoo

·         Your email client tells you that it is spam

Spam can be very hard to filter out; some spam may even make it through the spam filter. One example of spam that is very tempting is emails that say that you have one a large amount of money. If the email is in plain text and the email address is from a free email service like Gmail or Yahoo, its spam. Delete it and forget it.

If your email client tells you it is spam there is a very small chance that it might not be spam, if you are at a business building using business email, chances are that a lot of non spam emails go to spam due to high filtering settings. You do however need to be able to tell spam from non-spam though.

Password Changes

Sites like eBay or PayPal that are heavily encrypted send you an email when your password is changed, even if you were the one that changed it they will still send you an email or security reasons. If you do get one of these emails and you didn’t change the pass, you need to contact them immediately.

Take this for example, imagine that you are opening the door of your house to go inside after a long day at work, but you forget to un-arm your security system. The alarm will go off and the alarm company will call you. You tell them that it was only a false alarm and give them your pin number for the alarm system, and they reset the alarms.

So going back to the site, the alarm going off when you enter your house is just like you changing your password on a highly encrypted site. The website will contact you just as the alarm company would, except with the website, you usually don’t need to tell them if you changed it or not.

Free Items

Have you ever seen those ads on websites telling you to click to win a free item of high value like a MacBook Air ™ or an expensive car? Well to tell you the truth the website that you clicked on that ad from is just trying to make money, because advertising is how most free websites run. However, that form you will out to get the free item is just collecting your personal information, and you could start receiving tons of spam in the snail mail.

Online Shopping

Another way hackers can attack computers is through online shopping. My rule is the site either has to be approved by internet security companies like McAfee, or use PayPal for orders. I usually will only shop at an online shop if they use PayPal because the only information the store will see when you pay with PayPal is your Name and/or email. That’s a lot better than giving them your credit card number.

The best thing you can do to defend yourself while shopping online is by making sure the shopping website you are buying from is secure. Though eBay and Amazon are very secure, if they were to get hacked it is likely that websites like these would shut down part of their system temporarily until they are sure that the problem is fixed.

Downloads

Downloads can be handy, but if you download multiple programs every day, you could be even more prone to getting a virus. You need to be extremely careful when downloading files from file sharing sites, unless you truly know the person that is hosting them, or were redirected by a software company that you trust.

Antivirus and security

The key to internet safety is this, if a website or email doesn’t look safe, either don’t go to it, or do searches on it to see if it is safe. Don’t just look at one search result; look at multiple ones so you are sure that the website is secure. There is a neat little antivirus program that can keep you safe on the internet, and will even warn you if you try to open an infected webpage or email, and then clean any infected filed. You can download this antivirus program by going to http://www.avast.com/. If you already have an antivirus program you trust go ahead and download McAfee Site Advisor http://www.siteadvisor.com/.

Whether you like it or not, you need an antivirus program, it might make your PC a bit slow(er) but it is worth is, you never know when your computer could be threatened in an internet infection.