If you have been paying any attention to the news these past couple of years you would have noticed that there have been nearly 500 photos of celebrities (mostly nudes) that have leaked online. Time to protect yourself? You would have also noticed that our beloved government passed the “Snoopers Charter” law which allows governmental agencies to read your e-mails and texts and listen to your phone conversations.
Now you might think to yourself “I’m not a celebrity and nobody wants to see me naked” or “I’m no criminal, I’ve got nothing to hide!” but the truth is there are many other reasons why hackers would want to break into your e-mails, online banking or social media accounts. Here are a few simple steps you can take to protect yourself online:Keep your passwords safe and diversified
The first and most obvious thing that people always seem to forget is having a strong password. By this I don’t mean using the name of your first dog followed by your favourite number or your favourite dish. What I mean is a password with a good mixture of numbers, uppercase and lowercase letters and if you think your memory is sound maybe even some question marks or exclamation marks. Another important point is that you should have different passwords for each online account. If hackers figure out your Facebook password and it’s the same for all your social media, emails and online shopping you can be sure they will find their way into all your accounts!Use VPNs
Moving on to something a bit more technical, you should get a virtual private network (VPN). It sounds complicated but it really isn’t. It’s simply a tool which hides your IP address (your location) meaning that no one will know where you are when using the internet. There are plenty of VPN’s you can download – some are free and some aren’t. I personally use Zenmate which you can get as a google chrome extension. It’s free and has been working fine for me. It also helps you stream videos which aren’t available in your country. Don’t rely on “cloud” storage space
Lastly, you should use external hard drives instead of saving your files in cloud-based services like Dropbox, Google Drive or iCloud. Even though they are more convenient, they have all suffered hacks and if you’re the type of person who keeps nude photos (as all celebrities seem to) or just private information that you do not want to share with the rest of the world I would strongly suggest storing them on external hard drives or flash drives where you can be sure no one can get to them.
There! You’re all set! Follow these steps and you will greatly reduce the chances of having your naked pictures online, your credit card suddenly maxed out or your friends asking you about those weird requests you sent them on Facebook. Protect yourself.
By Dominic Luca
The post Tech: How to Protect Yourself Online From Scammers appeared first on Felix Magazine.
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