At Akins IT, we have helped hundreds of businesses and thousands of people to secure their identities online. We’re proud that we make the internet a safer and more secure place for our clients and friends. With all the good we’ve seen, we have also witnessed a lot of bad situations that could have been prevented or even minimized with just a few simple steps to protect someone’s online identity..
Here we share 5 essential tips to keep your identity more secure online right now:
1 – Make your passwords complex
A lot of people like to make their passwords easy to remember. We don’t blame them – after all, we have a lot of things to remember in life and online attacks aren’t usually top-of-mind. Choosing a date, name or word that you can easily recall is a huge mistake – if it’s easy for you it’s probably just as easy for a hacker to find it. More difficult passwords will better protect you online when they include letters, numbers and symbols, as well as both capital and lowercase letters. One tool to check your password strength is Password Monster.
2 – Don’t post sensitive personal details on your social media
It might be tempting to share lots of information about your life on social media. But it’s not just your friends that see it. We have often found during our work with businesses that it’s easy to pull very private information about almost anyone just from their Facebook or Instagram. Being cautious in giving away personal details online is a good habit to develop to protect yourself and your business from unwanted exposure.
3 – Make sure your social media settings are private
It is also very easy to get behind on updating your privacy settings on a website or app like Facebook, where they change frequently to get more and more information from you. TIME Magazine published an article last year about basic privacy settings and securing your Facebook that can help you become a little bit more private: You can read it by clicking here.
4 – Use multiple passwords
This should go without saying, but if one of your account passwords is discovered, the last thing that you want is for a stranger or malicious person to access everything. Our experience with protecting clients has shown that if someone gets a little information on you, they will try to get it all. Try to maintain a few different complex passwords to protect yourself that much better.
5 – Beware of phishing emails
Phishing emails are a type of spam email that ask you to reply with information or click on a link that then attempts to collect or even mine your information. Rest assured that reputable banks and business organizations will never ask for your personal information or account numbers through an email. If you ever doubt that, call the apparent sender of the email and verify it is legitimate and not just a scammer digging for your email or other identity information.
Because Akins IT specializes in protecting identities online, we feel comfortable saying that if you follow these 5 tips for your personal and business activity, you will be exponentially more secure online than you are right now.
To take your business to the next level of security, reach out to us today and we can discuss even further and more comprehensive ways to protect yourself, your employees, your customers and your business from online security threats.
Summary: Our experience has taught us that there are common mistakes everyone makes, these tips can improve your online security right now.
