Staying Safe Online
Posted on August 20, 2010 by admin
We are all aware that it is necessary to protect our personal information when online, but knowing how to do this effectively can be puzzling. It is not widely understood how to best ensure that your computer is safe from hackers seeking to steal secret banking information, or damaging computer viruses. This article contains steps you can take to protect yourself online.
Passwords
A good password is hard to guess. To make a safe password, use random letters, numbers and non-alpha numeric characters such as $, *, ! or @. Though easily memorable, try to avoid dates of birth, family names, or other information that could be worked out fairly easily. The harder it is to guess your password; the harder it is for someone to hack into your system.
By changing your password regularly you make it harder for a hacker to work out what it is, as there is less time for them to work it out. It is especially important you do this for online banking sites.
In the same way that it is more secure to have different keys for different locks around the house, it is a good idea to have different passwords for different websites. If one password is hacked, information from other websites is not lost.
Anti-virus software
It is important that you install a good quality anti-virus program, or have someone else install it for you. Use this to scan the PC on a regular basis; the best way is to have it set to automatically scan your computer at a certain time – choose a time when it will be most likely that your computer is switched on to avoid missing scans. This shouldn’t cost you too much, as there are a number of high quality free versions of anti-virus software available online.
Free Anti-virus software can be used to remove a virus if you find you have one on your computer. If this doesn’t work, you may find a removal tool for the specific virus online, or you could seek help from an expert. It is very easy to remove most viruses these days, but there are a few that can be more awkward, so be careful to make sure that your computer is clean before accessing the internet to keep from passing on the virus to others.
Firewall Software
It is as important to have Firewall software as it is to have anti-virus software. Used together they are very effective in protecting your computer from hackers. A firewall acts as a gateway that blocks unauthorised access to your computer, while allowing through data that you choose to send and receive.
Update Regularly
Your computer uses an operating system such as ‘Windows’. These operating systems are constantly being refined and updated by the companies who make them, who re-write little pieces of code to be released as security patches. Your computer can be set to automatically download and install these updates from the internet, keeping your operating system secure.
Backup Regularly
It is wise to regularly back-up all your stored information, to avoid losing your data if something does happen to your computer. This can be done by a number of methods, but one of the most simple is to have an external hard drive to back up onto. An external hard drive is a storage device like your computer’s hard drive. It is plugged into your computer when you want to back up, and data can copied to it for safe-keeping. This way, duplicate copies of your information are kept in the same way as you may keep duplicate copies of important documents at someone else’s house.
For further information please visit http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/HomeAndCommunity/TechnologyInYourHome/InternetTechnologies/DG_10038607
