I will be doing an on going series of good practices you should be aware of and using in your attempt to make your self better protected in this fast paced internet world. So here is the first of many. Enjoy
Do you use your Wifi at 3am?
Well unless you a night owl looking up a last minute flight to your mom’s house then please turn off your router/wifi router when your not using it. Well not every time you step away. Just for times like when your at work or when your asleep. If there is no path to your computer for someone to use then they cant get in. And if its on all day while your gone your neighbor can use it to download that new album for his favorite band that just came out illegally on your wifi.
You don’t have to shut down your computer but put it in a power save or sleep mode.
If you running in the screen saver mode then your computer is still alive and can still perform things in the background. Yes having a password to log in will help but not for everything. Powering it on and off all the time can start to cause wear and tear on your Hard Drive but thats is another topic.
Make sure you click log out and not just close the browser
When you log into a website your are creating a Session. Sometimes these sessions have a timer on them, other times they don’t. It all depends on the website, or how they have configured their Servers to handle the Sessions on their site. So lets say you close the browser and walk away from the library computer. If a person sits down right after you and wants to check their bank account or Facebook like you just did, they may be looking right at your account. If you select log out every time this session is terminated right there.
DO NOT open email attachments from someone you do not know
Who cares if it says the attachment is a desktop wallpaper of a cute kitten fighting a butterfly. You must resist. I know you love cats. Im sorry. If its from someone you have never heard of then there is a high chance that this is phishing. Phishing is a way that someone attempts to get you to do something or provide something that will in turn harm you. Yes when you open it there is a picture of a cat fighting a butterfly. But when you opened this you also may have executed code or something else malicious that can install something or make your computer do something. If the email is from the website that you gave your email address to in order to get pictures like this then that is fine. The address will be from something that sounds legit. So if you signed up at Catsarethebest.com that is who you should check to see who it came from. If it is from catscatscats.com you should consider just deleting it.
When was the last time you changed your password?
Just because nothing bad has happened yet does not mean you should not change it. And no you should not change it from scrambledeggs4 to scrambledeggs5. Just performing this increment does not make is safe even though it is different. You can change it up and use a different food you love. Password cracking tools check everything in increments as well. So they do check for ilovemydog1 and ilovemydog2 and ilovemydog3 and so on and so forth. This is a known weakness in passwords that bad guys would like to exploit.
