What are some ways everyone should protect themselves better online? originally appeared on Quora - the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights.
Answer by Mikko Hypponen, CRO at F-Secure, on Quora.
Here's couple of things everybody should do to protect themselves better online:
- Use a password manager. This will solve tons of other problems for you, as you will automatically have a unique strong password on every site. I prefer password managers that do not store your passwords in the cloud, but keep them locally encrypted on your own devices and just use an encrypted sync to keep them updated on them.
- Sign up for data leak notifications on Have I been pwned. This free service will email you right away if your email address is part of some data breach - such as the recent Yahoo breaches (or, say, Ashley Madison). The service is run by Troy Hunt and it's trustworthy.
- Use a good VPN to secure yourself while using wi-fi networks. Without a VPN, it's trivial for anyone else using the same wi-fi to see big parts of your traffic. Use a VPN on your laptop, on your phone and your tablet. I like VPNs that ensure your privacy by also removing tracking cookies and other potential breaches of privacy. The added benefit of this is that browsing becomes much faster - it's often faster with a VPN than without!
- Lastly, make a backup. Then make a backup of your backup. Backup your laptop, backup your phone, backup your tablet. And back them up so that you can recover your data even if your house burns down. Because sometimes your house really does burn down, and sometimes you are hit by encrypting ransom trojans. Our lives and memories are on our devices and they deserve to be back upped up.
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