Keeping Yourself Safe Online

Browsing the internet is nothing new to most people, and kids these days are pretty much raised with the internet. However, not everyone is completely used to using the internet, and it’s not always easy to protect your private information. There are a number of ways that you could compromise your information from everyday use, and it’s important that you know what you can do to keep things better secured. Whether you’re talking to people over social media, shopping online, or even just interested in trying out new apps. Your private information is at permanent risk until you know how you can better protect it.

Protecting your information

First and foremost, the most important thing you should be focusing on is how you set your passwords. Not all websites and domains require you to have a very secure password, and it’s important that you know what makes your password secure. Using things that can be tied to you are risky examples of passwords, especially if it’s public knowledge – and using numbers relevant to you is also risky. For example, if you’re someone who is known to be into cars – and having your password as “carlover” is not secure. Putting your birthday or birth year next to it doesn’t help either! Having a randomly generated password might be the ideal way to go about it, so long as you write it down somewhere.

No matter what you sign up for, you should know that your password will never be asked of you. If you ever are asked to give over your password, it should be a signal to you that the person is not who they say they are and are trying to get access to your personal information. If you’re signed up for Gmail, and someone claims to be an official working for Google, you should decline their request immediately.

If you are on the edge about giving away your physical address to an individual or a business online, you can avoid that too! There are services like physicaladdress.com that can prevent you from needing to give out your address to sites and individuals that you don’t trust. This way you get to still receive your mail and packages, but through an anonymous postal service that won’t give away your physical address. You never know who you can trust online, and this is sometimes a necessary step in protecting your information.

Using trusted websites

When it comes to browsing sites that are new to you, you should always make sure you can trust them before you give away your information. Sites that are well-designed are typical, though not always, more trustworthy. This is because websites are expensive to have designed, and it’s generally only sustainable to businesses that are legitimate. Some sites that are poorly designed might be riskier for you to give your information to and should be avoided if you’re not sure whether or not you can trust them. It’s better to be safe than sorry when handling private information.