Today Internet has become an important part of our lives because of its various advantages; but it’s also one of the dangerous places that come with many scams, malware attacks, hacks and more. Thus, somehow it is essential to use it wisely to protect yourself from cyber threats. Now learn how you can use the following 5 online tips for safe browsing.
Utilize Antivirus
All computer users must install an antivirus program on their PCs or laptops. It offers you real-time ongoing safety from malware and scams while surfing the internet. Once you’ve installed the antivirus, you can browse your web, check your emails, or update your social media accounts without any fear of getting hacked or attacked. Though there are different types of online threats such as hidden malware, scams, hacks, phishing, DoS attack (Denial of service), Man in the middle, drive-by downloads and many more; but you can certainly protect your computer from all these cyber-attacks by programming an antivirus that will block them from entering your system.
Create Complex Passwords
These days account hacks are becoming more and more common, therefore; it is imperative that users like you take a strong and necessary step towards protecting your accounts from hacks. You can do it by creating strong passwords for all of your social media accounts. Easy passwords like 1234abc are commonly guessed that makes your account vulnerable. Thus, as a reminder, create a combination of following characters and symbols to generate a strong and unique password.
- 8 or more characters (3-4 characters are easy to remember and guess)
- Uppercase letters (Try at least one uppercase letter in your password)
- Lowercase letters (Essential to have one lower case letter)
- Add Numbers (Important to use numbers in your password but not your mobile number or DOB)
- Special Characters like @#$%^&*()_+ (Use at least one symbol in your password)
What Not to Use in Your Password:
- Never Use re-used passwords
- Never use the name of your pet or family members
- Birth dates
- Addresses
- Never use easy-to-guess passwords such as ‘12345′, ‘09876′ or ‘password’
Download Carefully
Make sure whatever you download online, that is from a genuine website and not from a fraud website to send any malware to your system. Do check if the download is really what you are looking for or it’s just an illusion. There are many websites that advertise the product of other companies and often make you bundle other programs into your download list. Also, it takes lots of clicks to get a product downloaded from a third party website. Tweaking your IP address will also be helpful sometimes, check out the free ways to hide your IP address.
Read the reviews or comments mentioned below the product before downloading it. If you find it authorized only then you go ahead with that else leave the portal. While downloading a program, review all pre-checked boxes that are available in the download wizards of the program and un-check any kind of extra application that you don’t need to install.
When in doubt, you can also go to the forums to educate yourself about the product or watch videos related to that and also check comments or reviews about that.
Avoid Click on unknown links
Almost everybody receives spam emails or spam pop-ups on your browser or on your system which directs the users to some internal links to their website. It is somehow better to avoid clicking on those kinds of links especially if you find them unknown or specious. These types of links can be meant to hack your account or to drop a malware in your system through any file. Even some spam emails ask you to download some kind of file to your mobile phone or to your PC/Laptop. Avoiding clicking on those links or downloading files can save your life. Hardly there are some links that offer you some reliable information else most of the spams are meant to destroy you in any case.
Keep Updating Your Operating System
Updating your operating system either it is windows, Linux or macOS; you need to stay updated with the latest version of the OS. By doing so, you can enhance the security features and level of your current system. Your applications, your antivirus program, operating system files – all need to update regularly. Latest updates include fresh features to imperative security patches. Don’t stick to one old operating system version because it is open to a potential security risk. Hence, opt for the automatic updates option or you yourself check for updates periodically.
