How much time would you say you spend online, every day? It’s probably much more than you think, to be honest. In the UK, a study was conducted, that discovered that the average Brit spends around 5 hours on the internet every single day; excluding work time. It discovered that those within the age range 16 – 24 spend in excess of 2,500 hours per year on just Instagram – not including other social media apps.
More and more people are moving towards the cloud. As we stream video content, shop online, manage our bank accounts, meet friends and families, share photos, monitor and track our personal fitness journeys as well as talk to our doctors, all through the use of various very intuitive and innovative apps. And we do all of this through a wide variety of devices, whether it’s a wearable gadget, tablet, PC or laptop.
However, all of these things that we do online, have security implications. As we sign up to more and more services, our accounts and passwords begin to mount up, this leads to an inability for us to properly keep track of all of them. To make life easier for ourselves, many people resort to using the same passwords for different accounts – this only compounds the problem.
Which brings us to this article. Below you will find 6 security mistakes that you do not want to fall victim to:
1. Downloading a Fake Internet Security App
If you’ve been on the internet for any real length of time, then you’ve probably already stumbled upon one of those pop-up warnings, telling you your system is at risk, and that you’ll need to download a free antivirus tool to fix it. Hackers like to deploy this little trick to get people to download malicious files to their system. One method they love to use, is to trick the system user into believing that their virus is in fact an antivirus scanner tool.
However, when the user installs the fake virus scanner on their system, it only ends up preventing them from actually installing a real antivirus scanner on their computer. It’s important that any legitimate antivirus solution you have on your system is up-to-date and comes with its own pop-up blocker, this way you can ensure you don’t get caught in this all too familiar web.
2. Writing Your Passwords Down
Writing your password on a sticky note is a no-no or hiding it under the keyboard or in a file cabinet, is something you want to avoid. A lot of people make the mistake of writing their password down. Most websites and services demand that that the user creates a complex password, this makes the password less memorable – so it’s understandable why so many people will opt to write their password down somewhere. However, that doesn’t mean you should do it.
There are many avenues that you can take to get around this common issue. Such as using seamless single one-time sign ins. Users are asked to sign in just the one time, and through that, they’ll be able to access all their various apps and services. You can even go with a passphrase, as these can be more easily remembered. Preventing the use of common passwords is very important to reduce any sort of risk. The last thing you can do is use the password reset regularly. That way you can change the password periodically and also when you forget it – seeing as you’re keeping everything in your head.
3. Using Your Devices for Both Personal and Business Use
With this new era of remote working, this means a lot of people spend even more time logged onto the internet, while working directly from home. However, this does have its downsides, as it makes it more tempting for users to do personal things while on their company device. Such as purchase something, stream content, play a game or download an app. This could end up putting you at risk, and possibly your job. If a hacker is able to get malware onto your system, then it could end up compromising your company’s network.
To get around this, you should separate both work and play by using your work machine for work, and your personal desktop unit, smartphone, tablet or laptop for personal things.
4. Opening Phishing Emails
The Canadian Government compiled a report on phishing scams and found that over 80,000 people fall prey to it every single day. So, the next time you receive an email that says you won a holiday, or “click here” to reactivate your Netflix account. Or “check out this strange video”; you may want to delete it, straight away. Most email services come with their own filters that are designed to catch most of these messages, but you should always do your due diligence by checking the sender of any message. Make sure it’s either from someone you know, or someone you trust, before you open it and start clicking on things.
5. Reusing Passwords
Having already covered, writing passwords down, I figured, I’d explore another area of the same avenue. Anyway, as I already touched on, previously. Using the same password for different apps and services is of course, bad. Reusing them over a long period of time, possibly years, is even worse. Even if you’re using a complex password, one data breach can expose your password, and you may or may not know that a breach has actually occurred. For a lot of users out there, if a hacker has one of their passwords, then they can usually access all of their accounts.
When you use single sign-ins, it means less passwords, which translates into less risk. With multi-factor authentication, you’re adding an additional layer of protection. Password expiration dates, which you can create for your own passwords is very important, so that you’re regularly changing yours. Just be sure to make your new passwords truly unique.
6. Never Shutting Down or Restarting Your System
Just like having a quick nap isn’t a suitable replacement for a good night’s rest, putting your system into sleep mode isn’t nearly as effective as shutting it down completely.
Sometimes, powering off your system allows it to properly update, maybe it’s a new security loophole or update that you were unaware of. Updating your operating system is something that you must do. A system that hasn’t been updated for months, is a vulnerable one.
There is a reason that, whenever you bring any device to a help centre, they will ask you whether the device has been turned off and on. A full restart will clear the system of its memory, stopping any and all tasks stored in the RAM. This can help fix all kinds of issues.
The best workaround for this issue is to have automatic updates enabled on your computer, and configure it to automatically restart your computer. This essentially imposes the process onto the user – which in this case would be you.
—AUTHOR INFO—
Uchenna Ani-Okoye is a former IT Manager who now runs his own computer support website https://www.compuchenna.co.uk.
