Do you update (patch) your device software regularly?
If you don't, you should consider doing so. Each month, on the first Tuesday of the month, Microsoft releases an update fixing, on average, over 70 vulnerabilities in its software (every month — it's called Patch Tuesday!).
Other vendors have different schedules, but security patches are common and frequent on all platforms.
The vulnerabilities are public once the fix is released, so the bad guys frequently use that information to build hacks to take advantage of people who haven't updated yet.
I debated the subject of this email a bit. It's the sort of subject that might raise red flags because it sounds scary, and I don't like to scare people, but something happened recently that scared me a bit.
National Public Data, a company that collects credit information on almost everyone in the U.S. (Name / Address / Birthday / SSN) got hacked.
If you live in the U.S., it's very likely your data has been compromised, as almost everyone I've checked in the US has been. Their valid SSN and other information are now freely available to hackers.
You can go here to check if your information is compromised.
We will be releasing another episode this week to give you advice on what to do if your information has been compromised, which is likely if you live in the U.S.
Did you know you can use Ctrl + or Ctrl – to zoom in or out on a webpage?
Ctrl 0 will reset the zoom level to the default. (On a Mac it's Cmd instead of Ctrl).
On your phone, of course, you can use pinch gestures. But on a computer, these shortcuts are handy.
Do you ever connect to WiFi at a hotel, airport, or coffee shop? Any time you connect to a WiFi hotspot in public, you're at risk if you aren't careful.
A VPN is a simple solution to removing the danger of connecting to public WiFi. It's like insurance for your data. If you're using public WiFi, you should be using a VPN. We discuss it more in two podcast episodes, one about VPNs generally and one about ExpressVPN. I've been using them, and am very happy with them.
An alternative if you only use public WiFi occasionally is to tether to your phone's data connection.
Have you ever clicked “I forgot my password”? The way this works — sending you an email to reset your password, effectively means that anyone who gets access to your email gains access to every single account you have online.
Don't re-use your email password, and make sure it is a strong password. It should be at least 12 characters long, and have a mix including upper and lower case and some numbers & special characters. Listen to our podcast episode to learn more.
Have you frozen your credit? If not, you should do so now. It won't stop everything the bad guys can do if they steal your identity, but it can prevent the most common ways and safeguard your money.
You can freeze your credit with Equifax by visiting their website and clicking on “PLACE A SECURITY FREEZE”.
We created detailed instructions on our forum for all three major bureaus. It's free and easy to sign up, so go there now!
Phishing websites are websites that are designed to look just like legitimate websites. They trick you into entering your login details.
This:
is an example of what a phishing website might look like. It looks just like Amazon’s regular login page except for the address at the top. Phishing websites frequently have names that are very close to the legitimate website’s name, so they can catch people who make a typo.
Password managers will not automatically fill in a password on a website they don’t recognize, so if you are visiting a website that you login automatically to using your password manager, and it doesn’t this time, check the address bar – you might have accidentally visited a phishing site.
If you're not already using a password manager, listen to Episode 9 of our podcast or visit us at our forum and we can help you get started with one.
Did you think that private browsing mode makes your browsing private? Think again.
Private (or incognito mode) browsing mostly makes it so it doesn't store your history on your computer. Your ISP and websites you hit, including Google, can still track you.
It can still be useful, when, for example, researching a holiday you want to be a surprise to someone who shares the same computer. But you should expect that Google knows you're the one doing it.
