Basic Online Security – A Brief Introduction
One of the biggest challenges of today is to keep our information safe, I believe that most people don’t think about it, or just assume that having a decent password for every account is “safe enough” add to that 2FA and your golden, the truth is, things are not that simple.
Over the years I’ve been researching a bit and implemented a few measures to keep me a bit more safe, so why not share them with the world.
Rule 1 — Probably the most important of them all, have unique passwords for every service you use, do not under any circumstance use the same password for everything, sites are hacked all the time, so trust me your email and password are out there, having one password compromised is not that bad, just change it and move on, but if you use that password for everything, oh well the people who have it can potentially access all your accounts.
Remembering 50 unique passwords is simply not possible for the vast majority of people, so the best option is to use a password manager. I recommend Keepass, it’s open source and has clients for Windows, Linux, Android and iOS, it’s not the most user friendly one, but works extremely well. Generate unique passwords for every service you use, define a strong master password and you’re good to go. Keep several copies of your keepass database as a backup, if you store it in the cloud and are a bit paranoid encrypt the database for an extra layer of security.
Rule 2 — Check your 2FA method, most people use the phone number, turns out, it’s very easy for someone to get a copy of your SIM, so avoid it at all costs, use an authenticator app, like andOTP, for example. If the phone number is the only available option for 2FA consider getting a new number, just for this purpose, but do not give to anyone, a lot of people use services like sync.me and all their contacts, including you, end up on public databases.
Rule 3 — Keep things updated, be it your apps, phone, OS.
Rule 4 — Use common sense to avoid phishing scams and other malware
Rule 5 — Keep offline backups of all your important information, this can save you in case of a ransomware attack, for further redundancy also store your files in the cloud.
Rule 6 — Use Paypal for your online transactions, it’s not perfect, but it’s a safer method than entering your credit card information directly on a website.