By Mark Weinstein, CEO of www.Sgrouples.com, a privacy-centric social platform.
The Internet is an amazing, fantastic, vibrant place. But there are also evil people out there who steal identities, hack credit card accounts, track personal information, violate privacy, insert malicious programs that can exploit your company or home network, destroy your hard drives and raid your social network.
Here are some important ways to protect yourself:
1. Protect Your Wi-Fi Network
Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) can track every action you make through your Internet connection. This is typically used to track illegal activity. The bad news is that most wireless networks are easily cracked, meaning someone next door or in a car outside your house can use your network for illegal activity. Even worse, it is possible for someone on your wireless network to access other devices connected to the network, which is a serious security breach.
For this reason, it’s important to learn to secure your own wireless network: Open up your router settings page, create a unique password and network SSID name, enable network encryption, filter MAC addresses, reduce the range of your wireless signal, use a secure wireless network and monitor for unauthorized users.
2. Get Good Antivirus Software
The next step is to safeguard your computer against virus and malware attacks that can target your personal information and erase your saved data. Having a good antivirus program in place can save you a lot of headache by catching threats early.
Note: Even the best antivirus can’t save you 100 percent of the time. Viruses and malware come from the “shady neighborhoods” of the Web — gambling, pop culture, pharmaceutical and adult sites in particular. Be aware of what you’re clicking on; don’t download or open something unless you know what you’re getting into. A little precaution goes a long way.
3. Protect Your Passwords
These days we have more passwords to remember than ever: Make sure your passwords are different for each account.
At the very least, create alternative passwords for your critical accounts (i.e., your bank account and email). Keep your passwords offline on your hard drive, or, if you want to be even more secure, keep them on a physical notepad you keep near your desk.
4. Practice Safe Sharing
To be realistic, many of us are not going to stop sharing online. That’s why, instead of abstinence, it is important to learn and practice safe sharing. One way to do that is to review the privacy settings on every social media site you participate in and adjust the setting to maximize your protection against unwanted intrusion.
5. Don’t Daisy Chain Your Social Media Accounts
One of the reasons hackers are able to wreak havoc on people so easily is that all their social profiles are connected to one another. This means that if one profile is compromised, the others are likely to be as well.
While connecting to your accounts is easier if all you need to do is log in once to get access to all your social networks, it’s much less secure than if you have separate passwords for each one.
Determine how often you’re likely to use certain Web apps, and ask yourself if you really need to connect yet another third-party app to your Facebook page. If you don’t really need it, cut the link.
Keep in mind, the more apps you have connected to your accounts, the more potential weak points there are in your security.