Secure your web without changing your habits

Habits are hard to change… But today, having good online security practices is important.

Understanding online security is not easy for everyone. What is the difference between a secure and a non-secure solution for someone who doesn’t know what online security really means?

With that in mind, why would you put the time to be more secure online if you won’t be able to know how more secured you are?

Therefore, we gathered some security tips that don’t bother users, but will significantly increase their security & anonymity online. So, here are 11 practices that :

A 2FA is when you receive a code on your phone to enter it on your computer to log in somewhere. With 2FA, someone that wants to get into your account will have to :

Why 2FA on your mailbox? As you know, you can do: “I forgot my password” on a website, you’ll receive an email to change your password. This means that your mailbox’s password is your master password.

To protect this master account, 2 solutions : turn on 2FA on your email for each connection (best), or turn on 2FA for each new device you’ll touch (ok).

https:// is necessary when you transfer information like emails, passwords, credit card info… The problem is, not all websites have https://.

How to use https:// without having to look up and left every time you access a website ?

Encrypt one single folder in your computer to put your private documents. It is quite easy to do, there is a small tutorial down below. It is also possible to encrypt your entire hard drive (demo below).

Public WIFIs are an information gold mine for hackers. A common attack is called “sniffing”, it means listening to what info is going through a WIFI network.

Important: it is safer to use your mobile device as a hotspot than to use a public WIFI. But as you don’t always have your phone or data, here is a note to help you know what to do: before connecting to a public WIFI, during, and after.

1- Update softwares, especially antivirus or anti-malware. (Why : softwares running on old versions might have security breaches. Someone could get into your computer using one of those breaches.)

2- Ask for the real WIFI name (Why : hacking is about human error, someone can create a fake network called: “HotelFreeWIFI”, where people will connect entering the same password as the real hotel WIFI)

3- Turn off the File Sharing Options.

4- Turn on computer Firewall (why: to keep unwanted people on the same network from poking at your computer). For most of you, the firewall is already on, but just in case :

1- No financial transactions (ex: use of a credit card on a website) unless you really have to. (why : if the website isn’t securing the data transfer to their servers, your credit card info could be caught in the network)

3- Enable SSL on applications that access the internet. If you access your email from a desktop software (ex: Mac Mail), make sure your accounts are SSL encrypted in their settings.

1- No financial transactions (ex: use of a credit card on a website) unless you really have to. (why : if the website isn’t securing the data transfer to their servers, your credit card info could be caught in the network)

3- Enable SSL on applications that access the internet. If you access your email from a desktop software (ex: Mac Mail), make sure your accounts are SSL encrypted in their settings.

1- Forget the network. So that your computer doesn’t reconnect automatically to the network next time. It will do it automatically and you won’t have time to do the steps above.

2- Delete cookies, history and downloaded documents if you were on a public computer,

Who can remember 50 different passwords ? Here are 2 ways to do that :

E2EE ? “End-to-End-Encryption messaging” that means that the message will be encrypted form your phone all the way to the receiver’s phone.

Today, E2EE messaging apps have become really easy to use, you won’t see the difference between a normal messaging app and an E2EE’s.

If your online privacy is something important to you, did you know anonymous search engines exist ? Private search engines are like Google, but without the “selling the data part”.

Duckduckgo doesn’t have as many engineers as google does, so when you have a complicated search, you can google it using Duckduckgo to keep your privacy : type “!google” before what you search on Duckduckgo.

People have a back up online or offline. Most of the services that provide online backup as a service already are encrypted.

If you decide to back up offline, a good practice is to instal an encryption software on your backup drive or flash drive (it takes 2 minutes to set up).

Some updates are solving security breaches. A company will not always specify it other than by saying “minor bug fixes”.

Unfortunately, on the other side, security breach on softwares are very well recorded on the internet. Therefore, it is very easy for someone to know which versions of a software has a security breach. Thus, if a virus gets inside your computer, it can quickly scan it for old software versions and potential breaches.

The good thing is now, softwares will always inform you about a new release and some of them even update automatically.

An antivirus scans in real time the files arriving on your computer and deletes the fraudulent ones already on it. Check which antivirus you have, and if it’s up to date. The leading antivirus on the market today are AVIRA, AVAST, CASPERSKY… Warning : having 2 antivirus on one computer will usually create a conflict and prevent them from working properly.

There is something better that an antivirus, it is called an anti-malware. A malware is a general term that englobes : trojans, spyware, worms, phishing, rootkits, adware, ransomware, and virus. It will provide a broader security.

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