How to Secure Your Online Presence
Being online is a great way to learn, meet new people, explore different interests and topics, and it seems like it's an unlimited resource of entertainment! However, there are always a few people with bad intentions roaming around, looking for easy targets to get. In this article, we'll teach you how to secure yourself online to ensure a safe and worry less trip to the internet.
Passwords
Nowadays, almost every website uses some form of login. This helps visitors to save their information, purchase items, and sometimes even getting personified deals. Passwords also protect any sensitive information you may leave behind on this website like IP address, physical address, names, and credit card codes. Still, it’s not all easy-peasy. You will need to create a diverse range of strong passwords for each website you come across. If you use the same password multiple times, it will be easy to gain access to your account when someone finds out about your password.
While having a strong password makes your account secure, it's helpful to change your password as well now and then. This keeps your accounts secure, and in case of a breach, your information is more likely to be safe due to the frequent password changes.
How to make a strong password
A strong password is a password that isn't easily guessable, uses unpredictable numbers and letters, and has no affiliations to your personal life.
A secure password consists of at least twelve characters containing both numbers, lowercase letters, uppercase letters, and symbols. It also should not have any recognizable dictionary words or a combination of two words, as that is easy for AI to guess.
A password like "Babydoll#345" may have twelve letters, symbols, and numbers, but all of its numbers are at the end, and the word is easily recognizable. However, a password like "Ba3Y#60lL" is way harder to guess/hack and will send potential hackers away since it takes too much time to get in.
Password managers
With all these different passwords, it can be hard to remember them all. Having to send the “forgot my password” email is also always a hassle. That’s why some people use password managers. These are both online and offline applications that remember your passwords for you. With this, you only have to remember one password, which is that of the password manager.
The most popular password managers like LastPass and Keepass claim that only you have access to your passwords. Both of them use two-step verification to make sure it's you accessing your passwords.
However, LastPass costs about $40 for secure password storage. KeePass claims to be completely free but offers less advanced technology to access your safe, which may make you feel less secure. Also, not all password managers are compatible with different devices or browsers.
Two-step verification is a safe option when looking to secure your online passwords. It usually requires two devices or methods to gain access to your account. Some companies offer this two-step verification through the use of fingerprint scanning on your phone and an additional password, as well. Google uses this tactic as well when you try to log into your Google account. Once you have your phone connected, they will send you a message asking you to verify it’s you by tapping the given number from your computer screen on your phone screen. This makes it harder for unauthorized figures to enter your accounts.
Cookies
Almost all websites use cookies as well, and you might have encountered a few during your browsing trips. Cookies help you to navigate a website better, remember your website preferences and your ad preferences as well. However, cookies can bring some negative traits to them, as well.
Over the years, various websites have been the victim of hackers. They are using cookies to gain usernames and other user information. Even when there is no breach of security, cookies still have access to privacy-sensitive information, which may or may not is seen by third-party cookies and websites as well. While this is usually not malicious in intent, it could give you annoying ads and spam-mails more often.
A good way to profit off of the cookie “perks” is to clean your cookies every now and then from your browsers. This will refresh them and makes sure your information stays private.
Making sure your accounts are safe when browsing the internet isn’t as hard as it may seem, it only requires a few minutes to change your passwords and a few minutes to add them to a password manager if you decide to use one. Cleaning your cookies can be done within your browser or with a specialized program, as well.