Any account registered on a website can be at risk of tampering or theft of personal data. This really applies to everyone and every account can be valuable for a hacker or for criminal organizations that intend to collect email addresses and passwords and personal information of various types that can then be crossed to clone accounts and spread malware.
Among these web accounts, some are, of course, more valuable than others and, in particular, today those to which we must pay more attention are: The Google / Gmail / Android Play Store account, Facebook, Paypal, Ebay, Apple, Microsoft, Twitter, Instagram, Whatsapp, Amazon, Yahoo and any other email address accounts, online banks, shopping sites or social networks.
The main problem is that if, for example, a group of hackers manages, as has actually happened several times, to steal and make public the passwords of millions of accounts on a site like Yahoo Mail used by many people around the world and if these passwords are used, without ever having been changed, even for Facebook and Google accounts, so the whole digital life with all private information becomes exposed to the criminal world and is potentially very easy to violate and steal.
Such a mistake of naivety, which is only one (rather frequent) example, nullifies practically any effort made to protect accounts and online security, just because on the other side of the world someone has succeeded, maybe even two years. ago, to violate a site's information.
In this article we are going to discover 16 ways to protect private web accounts, not only to make the possibility of violating it at least very difficult and discouraging even for the best hacker, but also to prevent a possible security incident at a only the site may compromise the security of the information in that and also in other accounts.
Below, therefore, a complete and concise list of quick and easy ways to make all web accounts safer .
1) Close unused accounts
The first danger of online security comes from unused accounts and, above all, those forgotten or left to die.
It is very important, however, to close the accounts registered in unused sites so that the information entered is not in the public domain and because the username and password could be "tested" by hackers to access our main accounts.
The danger is even greater in the case of accounts on minor sites now abandoned even by those who care for them, because they can be hacked easily.
2) Add two-factor verification
Almost all major web accounts today have two-factor verification which protects them with a variable code to be entered after the login password.
The code can then be generated from an application on the phone or received as an SMS.
Thanks to this code, even if someone found out our password, they would still not be able to access our account.
In another article some of the most important sites and apps where you can activate two-step verification, including Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft etc.
3) Protect password reset
The trick of finding a password by asking to reset it for an account is one of the most used.
For example, many do not pay attention to the configuration of the security question, the answer of which goes to reveal the password if it has been forgotten.
If the answer is easy to guess, then our account becomes easy prey for anyone, even for any smart friends.
It is therefore worth going to check the security settings of each web account and check the password recovery mode, possibly canceling the one by answering a question.
4) Check the login activities on the account
On some sites like Facebook and Gmail you can check the latest accesses to verify that there are no strange or suspicious activities by strangers or that they cannot come from us.
It is worth checking this information regularly.
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- Check Facebook's security settings
- Check Google and Gmail account security settings
5) Delete connections from external accounts or apps
This is also a protection measure for accounts such as those of Facebook and Google, which can be used to access other sites and applications.
From the security settings pages, you can check these connections and block those that are no longer used.
6) Never use the same passwords for accounts
If you always use the same password on all websites, it is enough that one of them is hacked or hacked and that our password becomes public.
To stay protected, it is therefore necessary to always use different passwords in each individual web account.
Obviously it can become difficult to remember all these passwords, also considering that these must be difficult for anyone to guess and that they are not dictionary words and therefore you have two strategies: use a policy, or use a password manager.
As for the password manager, we can use a program like Keepass or an application like LastPass, (as written in the guide on how to manage the passwords of web accounts while regarding the policy, we talked about it in the guide on how to choose passwords impossible to discover.
7) Change passwords regularly
If you have a password manager set up, then this is not a problem, but if you use creating passwords manually, you have to change the passwords every now and then, every 3 or 6 months at most.
8) Keep programs, systems and apps up to date
While this may not be enough, the basis of online security today is the use of patched and non-vulnerable programs against known bugs.
It is therefore always necessary to check that the PC or mobile phone is updated with the latest version of the operating system in use, that the apps are updated and that the web browser is always the latest version available.
9) Do not trust anyone
Every strange Email, every message received that doesn't seem natural and every offer too good to be true, even if it comes from a friend, is almost certainly a scam or a phishing attempt.
10) Use antivirus or even other security programs
Antivirus is the basis of every computer security system and even if it is not enough, it remains essential.
In another article we have seen the best combination of security programs.
11) Use a secret email address
Knowing a person's email address means being halfway there to find out the login credentials in a web account.
On the other hand, if we use an email address only to register accounts on the Internet and keep it secret, in the sense that we do not use it to send and receive messages, it makes everything safer.
12) Keep your phone safe
Modern smartphones are not only computers full of personal data inside, but also devices in which to receive recovery or access codes for authentication on websites (see point 2), therefore they must be kept really carefully.
Obviously, therefore, it is important to set up a screen lock with effective code and also a location or anti-theft system.
13) Install a VPN
For those who access the internet using a public wifi, it is important to use a VPN in order to hide the data sent, including passwords, even from the network manager who could spy on everything we do.
READ ALSO: Best free VPN services for safe and free surfing
14) Always add a PIN to access the phone and also to any computer used
15) Never share a web account with someone and, above all, never send passwords via messages or email.
16) Log out of web accounts after use.
This always applies when we use a PC that is not ours or that we are not the only ones to use.
Note that for some sites like Facebook and Google you can also log out and log out remotely.
READ ALSO: How to surf online safely
