HOW CAN YOU PROTECT YOUR PERSONAL ONLINE DATA?
As an IT Company, many businesses continuously ask us how to secure their organizations network. However, more and more people are inquiring about their personal security. How should they secure their day to day browsing on their phone or laptop? With these requests, we have decided to put together a list of the top six things individuals can do to secure their browsing. You do not have to have any technical expertise to implement these suggestions!
DO NOT USE UNSECURED WIFI
Do you ever search for a network to connect to and some of the options do not require a password for you to use them? Whether you are at an appointment or business meeting, do not connect to an unsecured network. Instead, try asking the receptionist if you can connect to the secured network. If they don’t provide you with the password then only connect to the unsecured network if you have a virtual private network (VPN). Click here to learn more about VPNs and to see a list of the best VPNs in 2019.
UPDATE YOUR APPS AND COMPUTER
You know those annoying notifications you get on your phone or desktop? The ones that tell you an update is available? More often than not those updates include patches to security breaches and potential bugs. Make sure you update your computer and phone apps to avoid potential breaches!
DO NOT PURCHASE FROM AN UNSECURED SITE
Google recently released a statement, “you should always protect all of your websites with HTTPS, even if they don’t handle sensitive communications. Aside from providing critical security and data integrity for both your websites and your users’ personal information, HTTPS is a requirement for many new browser features, particularly those required for progressive web apps.” The easiest was to see if a site is secured is to look at the URL and see if it begins with HTTPS or HTTP, the former being secured. Avoid browsing on sites that aren’t secured but even more so, make sure you do not provide your credit card information or any other valuable information to an unsecured site.
AVOID PHISHING EMAILS
This is a tricky one because the whole idea behind phishing emails is that they are disguised well. Their purpose is to look just like any other ordinary email but the objective is to steal sensitive information from users. Click here to see if you can identify a phishing email, unfortunately it’s no easy feat.
USE INCOGNITO AS A DEFAULT BROWSER
On your computer but especially a public PC. Incognito mode prevents browser history to be saved. So whether you share a computer or browse on a public computer, incognito mode on Google Chrome is always a recommended solution for an added layer of security. Click here to check it out.
USE A PASSWORD SAVER
You should not be using the same password for everything because if it is hacked, the hackers will have your password for all your different accounts. You might think, “how will I be able to remember all my different passwords then?” Luckily, the problem has already been solved by multiple companies, including Google. If you are browsing on Google Chrome, when you create a new password you will get a pop-up asking you if you would like to save your new password, click yes. Basically, our goal here is to make sure you do not end up on this list.
Enjoy the tips and happy browsing from your friends over at Fencecore, a top ranked IT Company in Montreal according to Clutch.