This year, Safer Internet Day is Feb 11. Celebrated in more than 100 countries (created in 2004), this day is about creating both a safer and better internet. The 2020 U.S celebration and livestream will take place on February 11th at the Computer History Museum in Mountainview, California.
In honor of this global event, the privacy and security researchers at VPNpro.com have offered some smart online practices for your readers to keep safe and sound on their devices.
5 Tips on How to Stay Safer Online
1. Enable Two-Step Verification: This provides an extra layer of security beyond your username and password to help protect accounts against bad passwords and offline phishing. Also known as two-factor authentication.
2. Create Unique and Strong Passwords: Using the same password for every account can leave internet users more vulnerable to hackers. Long combinations of random words and some punctuation make better passwords, and make the computer’s job to guess a password more difficult. For example: “astonishing-donkeykong-bedsheets” makes a better password than “D0nk3yk0ng1”.
3. Update Your Software Regularly: Keeping your device software, browsers, firewalls and anti-virus programs updated helps them all work together to protect yourself from the newest malware and hackers gaining access to your data.
4. Monitor Your Cookies: Cookies track what you do when you access the internet. Companies use that data to market their goods and services, some for good reasons, while others may not be so good. Private browsing functions allow you to manage who can track your cookies.
5. Be Cautious Using Public WiFi: Free available wifi can be convenient, but in many cases, these networks do not offer encryption, allowing hackers to easily monitor your online activities. You can protect yourself by using a VPN (Virtual Private Network) whenever you transmit personal data through these networks. A trusted VPN encrypts your data and activities, so bad actors have a hard time stealing it.
