Online Safety

Online Safety – 7 Tips for Keeping Safe

1. Keep your PC updated. Not only the firewall, antivirus, but look out for flash-player, browser, extension and software updates.
2. Make sure you change your password occasionally. Something like sde5te546yFS5%£x is virtually hacker proof, as long as you don’t reveal it.
3. Do not click on links in emails or on web-pages you are unfamiliar with. Tip, hover your mouse over the link and look in the bottom left of your browser. If the address is http://www.barclaysbank.clicknet.ru or an from a Prince in Nigeria wanting to give you £20m USD in return for your address and banking details, it is a scam.
4. If you get a phonecall from your bank or the Police saying your account has been compromised and wanting to confirm any sensitive information, hang up. The Police will come knocking, if it is them and your bank will never ask for any sensitive information. Personally, I would hang up and find the bank or the local police telephone number and ring them. Don’t ring a number they give you though. It could still be a scam. If you have online banking, any account related messages will come through their encrypted secure messaging system.
5. Don’t store your passwords in your browser; especially if you are on a wireless connection. Create a local file on your computer and password protect that to access your passwords. It is quite easy to hijack a browser, hard to access a local password-protected computer.
6. Be careful what personal information you give in your social media profiles. If an identity theif can get your address, date of birth and full name, by accessing the electoral roll you willl be suprised at the amount of information they can get. Certainly enough to pass themselves off as you if you are not careful.
7. Never, ever make it public online through social when you and your family are going away on holiday, espcially overseas. Tell them when you have been. Certainly do not post updates where you are. When you come home you might find your house has been burgled. Criminal gangs spend a lot of time trawling through social media looking for identities to steal and houses to break into.

Don’t let any of this put you off the online world. Never accept anyone’s “online truth.” Use stranger danger, no matter how old and careful you think you are. Be careful and be safe, and never meet up with anyone you have been talking to online without either going with someone or going to a very public place that you know.

It is horrible to talk in such negative terms but your personal and online safety must always be your primary concern.