Life Pro Tips: 5 Simple Pieces of Advice to Keep Your Information Safe Online

Ever heard of those scary, horrendous stories of the teenage girls who freely trust dangerous old men in chat rooms; or those old grandpas that rattle off their bank details to mysterious callers that manipulate them into thinking their account has been shut down, or perhaps of the too-little children that do the same; or of the middle-aged moms who post “adorable” videos of their little children’s bath time at an age where they cannot consent to it, basically setting a bad example on morals of privacy for them as well as allowing the content to be misconstrued for other purposes, or those of the - well, you get my point. Cyber security is a matter of relevance to every age group, community, gender; tech savvy or not. In this age of increasing prevalence of technology and smart devices, it is becoming increasingly important to know how to keep your data safe and away from malicious hands. So, here are some tips to ensure the very same that are easy to understand and implement.

1. Carefully read any pop-ups asking for permissions on sites or apps

You may have wondered how sometimes you’ll be in conversation with someone, phone left forgotten at your side and actually be having a good time for once. A while later, you’ll pick up your phone, and go
straight to scroll through your favourite social media app and lo and behold, to your great alarm, there you’ll find advertisements for the very specific thing you were discussing with the aforementioned person earlier. This can only be explained by the app having permission to access your microphone, which didn’t you bestow with yourself when you were trying to record audio with it a while ago,
right? 

So, it’s always important to check what the permission implies before giving it and seeing whether it’s necessary or not. Most operating systems allow you to ask the app not to track any information, or have settings to allow access to your mic, camera, location, or others only while you are using the app or only for a certain duration. You should learn how to utilise these for your benefit. 

2. Use stronger passwords and learn how to keep them safe

The best and easiest thing you can do to increase your level of data protection is make strong, 8-character or more passwords. The standard way to do so is to include both sentence cases (capital and small letters), special characters (#,*,!, etc.), and numbers. It’s
also better to not reuse the same repetitive password across all your logins and especially if it’s something comical like “1234”. 

Well, now arises the question, if you make so many unique and unidentifiable passwords, how are you supposed to memorise them yourselves? The solution is straightforward: use password managers. This is an insider trick only few actually make use of, but it’s quite manageable. Chrome, Brave and most browsers already have a
built-in password manager that is fairly good at safeguarding your sensitive login information. Some others I would personally recommend are Dashlane, Bitwarden and Keeper.

3. Always opt for multi-factor authentication if available for sign-ins

Nowadays most apps, sites or webapps also offer two-factor or multi-factor authentication for improved safekeeping. In summary, there are three methods to authenticate or procure evidence that is indeed the original user or customer visiting the service: by providing information on something they know, on something they have, or
something they are. These relate to passwords, a device or pendrive,
and biometric data respectively. Since passwords are already a fundamental element of signing into any account, apps and websites have started providing an additional verification process, typically by sending an SMS or mail on the contact information previously inputted by the user, which contains a numerical code or link to be opened to prove that it is indeed the right person in control of the information. However, these systems offer you a choice to apply them or not, which is practically unnecessary as they increase your cyber security by ten folds.

4. Back up any and all important data

If you have any work files, long-term projects, top-secret information and things of the like, it’s an important task to 
regularly backup your data on credible storage services. Most officials prefer to abide by the 3-2-1 rule, i.e. storing three copies of your document on two different media (such as local and external hard drive) and one of it on an off-site media (such as
cloud-based services). In any case of scams or data theft, if there is availability of a recent backup, you will be able to recover all losses without much effort and stress. 

5. Know how to recognise phishing scams and dodgy websites

Phishing scams are methods of cyber attacks that send emails or 
 messages that appear to be sent from authorised sources and attempt to mimic the original service’s design to convince the same. They can also be found in the form of fake, poorly-reconstructed websites that claim to be the official one. 

To recognise a phishing scam, just look out for some of these sketchy subtleties that stand out:

(i) Suspicious grammar or syntax

(ii) Spurious spaces or lack thereof

(iii) Unprofessional phrases or punctuation

(iv) Lack of security certificate or missing “s” in “https” (the s stands for secure)

Some common phishing scams often include phrases like - 

(i) “You have won so and so prize…”

(ii) “Your account has a problem…..urgent action needs to be taken or else it will be deleted..”

(iii) “There are new purchases from your account…”

In any scenario if you happen to have already clicked on a phishing link, the next best course of action would be to follow this short and simple 5-step routine: 

IDENTIFY - try to figure out the root source of the problem, it’s extent and which of it is to be acted upon

CONTAIN - limit the further damage it may cause to any parties involved

ERADICATE - remove or undo the harm already caused by the breach

RECOVER - restore everything back to normal or as it should be

REVIEW - reflect on the incident, what led to it and how it can be prevented in the future

To conclude, staying alert and aware of how to keep your internet surfing experience safe and enjoyable can go a long way from protecting you from annoying joke websites to the compromise of an extremely vital account. Happy safe browsing!