The Internet is a maze, surfing is as easy as finding viruses, hackers and information thieves ready to exploit any error or naivete to hit. It is important to always surf the internet with common sense, making good safeguarding practices that keep dangers away and normal and regular. Of course everyone, I hope, has an antivirus solution that protects against malware infections, but more and more often this is not enough and the antivirus can be put out of business by a trivial operation. Without repeating a guide to online security that we have already written, we see here five things to do to make our lives safe on the internet, things that must become automatic and natural every time you take in hand a device (computer or smartphone) connected to the internet .
1) Enable two-factor authentication
Most web service accounts, such as email accounts and social network accounts, contain a lot of personal and confidential information. Passwords alone are not enough to protect these accounts. Two-factor authentication is a double verification of the password so that, in addition to the normal password, it is also required to enter a variable code that is sent to the mobile phone or generated by an application (a bit like it happens for online bank accounts). Without this code, it is not possible to access the account, even having the password.
There are many sites where you can enable two-factor authentication: Google and Gmail, Facebook, Microsoft and Skype, LastPass, Amazon etc. Although it can be a nuisance at first, it will become natural after a while. The double check can however be disabled on the home computer.
2) Browser protection against dangerous websites, extensions and plugins .
The web browser is the program for surfing the internet and must therefore be protected on personal computers. Fortunately, all the latest versions of browsers have preventive protection both against malicious websites and against the installation of unwanted extensions and plugins (just think of the toolbar). If we wanted something more, we saw how to strengthen the browser against viruses, malware and privacy intrusions, also talking about the security options in Chrome, Internet Explorer and Firefox.
3) Knowing how to use incognito navigation
Private or incognito browsing is not for hiding on the internet, but for surfing so as not to leave traces. Incognito browsing is used to connect to your accounts, to read emails or to perform other private operations, even on another person's computer or on a public PC, without risking that some information remains in memory and without recording any history. Incognito browsing is also useful when you let another person use our computer, to prevent him from spying on our online activities and, at the same time, to let him browse in private.
If you wanted to do even more, you could surf in sandbox with sandboxie, completely isolating the browser from the system.
4) Use a VPN
For certain online activities it may be safer to use a VPN that covers the real connection and prevents external services from knowing where it comes from.
In another article, the best free VPNs.
However, this is not always a thing to do unless you want full privacy regarding what you do on the internet and it is very useful in the case of connection from a public wifi network and without protection or entry password. A VPN (Virtual Private Network), in essence, is capable of encrypting all incoming and outgoing connections on a public network (the Internet). Since all connections are encrypted, it would be difficult for anyone to spy on Internet activities.
In another article, precautions when using public and unsecured connections .
5) Use a password manager
Most of us have more than ten different accounts on the internet and it is difficult to remember all passwords if you don't use a certain policy. It is absolutely wrong to use, as passwords, names of things or people that are easy to remember and also to always use the same. A password manager stores all passwords so that only one becomes the one to be remembered, the others are entered automatically.
The best password managers like KeePass and LastPass, support multiple platforms so you can keep all your passwords close at hand.
A browser like Chrome may still be enough to manage passwords using its internal manager.
In another article, all the recommendations to protect website accounts and not lose possession of them
Beyond this, I recommend checking if you are protected enough on the internet and if your PC is safe .
