General Computer Protection Strategies to Employ

In addition to buying software for anti-hacking and anti-virus protection, there are a number of additional strategies that you can employ on your computer and as you operate your computer to help protect it against intrusion and to protect your information wherever you may choose to let it reside. Here's a list of some tips that will help you.

• Turn off or logout of your computer when not using it - the less time your computer is online, the less it is being seen by externals that may mean you harm.


• If you have more than one person in your household using your computer, set up separate "firewalled" accounts for each of them - don't let people onto your system through your own login and password.


• Keep your anti-virus software as current as you can. Update it regularly so that you are protected against the newer viruses that have been identified and have been guarded against by your anti-virus software provider.


• Increase the privacy settings on your computer. In an upcoming lecture, I show you how to update these settings if you are using Windows 10. Watch that video as well and also be looking to update your privacy settings on older versions of Windows if that is what you are running on your computer.


• Be careful opening PDF files you receive from external sources. Hackers and software virus creators have in recent times found this to be an effective platform for sending out their damage causing payloads.


• Regarding e-mails, don't be curious. If you don't know where an e-mail came from, don't open it. If you do open an e-mail from someone you don't know and/or that you received in an unsolicited manner, do not click on any links found within the e-mail. Executable viruses are sometimes attached to what you think is just a link to another site.


• If you are concerned about the authenticity of an e-mail address when you have received an e-mail, check it out by looking at the "Details" dropdown you can click next to the e-mail name. I have sometimes even taken this one step further by checking out their e-mail domain address using a domain provider to do a "Who Is" search when I am really wondering about where something came from.


• Be careful of all downloads to your computer. Be sure you know the source is safe and you are on a real webpage belonging to that source when you download the content. Hackers are now setting up "Fake" webpages that look like real businesses to lure you in so that they can access you through downloads from their sites.


• Using the "Cloud" for storage is risky - even places like Google Drive, Dropbox, etc. can be hacked. Cloud storage locations seem to be prime targets for hackers. These are convenient storage and data backup locations for many so if you want to use them, here are a few tips that could save the privacy of your content there.

o The simplest protection method is to only send encrypted or Zipped content up there for storage. If you are using zip files, use the Zip password feature before sending. This helps to protect your content even if that site gets hacked.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/9457987