Best Ways To Avoid Being Hacked Online

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It’s happening with increasingly regularity: news of a major hack that affected millions of people and their most private information. You have to exercise extreme caution with your online accounts these days. To help you avoid being phished, snooped on, or otherwise hacked, make sure you follow these tips:

Toughen up your passwords. Always be sure to have a separate, dedicated password for each of your online accounts. This will ensure that, even if one of your accounts gets hacked, not all of your information will be available to a criminal.

Stop sharing so much information. We currently live in a climate of it being OK to tell everybody every detail about every facet of our lives… in order to get as many likes or comments as possible. This is fine, as long as you restrict the discussion of certain details (i.e., your graduation year, your date of birth, and (of course!) your social security number).

Make sure your virtual identity is secure with these suggestions.

Backup all your important content. With either an external hard drive or a virtual service like Dropbox, you can easily save all your electronic documents and files in a safe location. This is important, since you’ll want to have access to these in case your phone or computer is lost or stolen.

Look for the padlock and “https://”. Truly secure online websites and services always include a “padlock” symbol in front of the URL for their site. In addition, these sites’ addresses will start with “https,” and not “http” — the “S” stands for “secure” and is an excellent sign that you aren’t likely to be hacked while on that particular site.

Be smart about activity in public places. In airports, coffee shops, libraries and other major locations, hackers are ready and waiting to prey on unsuspecting people. Never, ever use an unsecured WiFi connection, and avoid using USB-enabled mobile charging ports, as both of these are used by hackers to steal your information.