The internet can be a scary place. Accounts can be hacked and passwords can be leaked out. We want to help protect you on the internet. Here are a few things that could make your internet experience safer. I will talk a little bit about passwords, browsing and social media.
Let’s start at the beginning. What is the internet? You know what the internet is. You’re browsing around, you’re going to different sites, you’re doing interesting things. Most of the time they make you create an account to visit sites.
To practice safer internet today, let’s talk about how you can secure your accounts.
Passwords
The best thing you can do is use different passwords on all of your accounts. Your Facebook account, your email address, your bank website, all of these different websites you can have different passwords. And you should have different passwords. They shouldn’t even be things that you can remember.
One of the best things to do is to generate strong passwords using a browser. Google Chrome is my browser of choice. It will generate strong passwords for you and store them in the browser. I think that’s ok to do if you have the browser secured and you have the computer secured. When you create a new account, you’re going to set up a good password for that account.
2-Factor Authentication
You are also going to set up 2-factor or multi-factor authentication. In its simplest for multi-factor authentication is when you use your phone to get a code to access your account. Another way to use multi-factor authentication is when you have to generate a 6 digit code using the Google Authenticator app.
That is very secure. Even in those cases if they have your email address and they have your password they will not have that phone that is generating those codes. And they probably won’t have your phone to be able to text it.
That is multifactor authentication. Your bank probably already does this, Facebook uses this, your email probably uses this. You just have to turn it on.
You’ve probably got bad passwords that have been there forever. Change them now and turn on two-factor authentication. That is going to secure your accounts. Your email is important. All of your other accounts use your email address as the account information. When you do a password reset it goes to your email address. You have to have a good email password.
Browser
Use Google Chrome. There is a new version of Edge that is based on Chrome. You can use Edge too. Whatever you do it has to be a safe browser and it has to be fully patched. It needs to be the latest version of the browser. Whenever you’re surfing the internet you’ve got the latest browser and it’s patched.
Social Media
When you use Facebook you have an account on Facebook. Your Facebook account is probably linked to your email address. What you should do is secure that account using 2-factor authentication. Facebook will do this. If you try to sign on to Facebook from a new device, it makes you use their code generator.
The same is true with Twitter. If it’s login to Twitter it’s going to want to text you a code. You need to do this. It’s a pain, but you only have to do it the first time you log on with a new device. It’s not a huge deal and you really need to do it. People are getting into social media accounts and sending out these funky little messages that say stuff like, “You’ll never believe what we caught you in this video doing.” The videos aren’t real. You click that and then all of a sudden it goes out to everybody else.
Social Media Apps
All of the social media platforms are app platforms now. People can write games, little puzzles and quizzes for Facebook. You need to get in there and check what apps have access to your account. You may have taken some stupid quiz 7 years ago and it still has access to your Facebook account. Get in there and peck around in the settings and make sure that nothing has access that shouldn’t. And if you don’t know ere on the side of caution. Just block it out. If you want to use it again, you can always re add it.
There is no reason for some weird little quiz you took about what kind of cheese I am to have access to your Facebook account forever. Just block it. If you ever want to find out if you’ve changed cheeses you can add it again.
So let’s do a recap. You’re going to have a good email address (gmail is a really good email). You’re going to have a good password on that email address. You’re going to have 2-factor authentication turned out! That’s going to keep you safe.
You’re going to have a good browser like Google Chrome or Firefox. It’s going to be up to date and the latest version. If you use social media, you’re going to have it secured. You’re going to make sure there are no weird little apps that are running in the background that are using up your information.
Help secure the world by sharing this information.
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