What are Internet Safety Practices ?🤔
Internet safety is defined by Applied Educational Systems as, the practice of following actionable guidelines, understanding modern technology, and protecting your digital devices so you can defend against the malicious parts of the online world. In other words they are practices that prevent against vulnerability to online attackers.
What are these safe choices you can make to protect yourself from cyber attack👨🏾💻👩🏾💻
- Verifying someone's identity
You can verify ones identity by doing a simple research on that person or who the person claims to be. Everybody leaves traces of them self some where. search the person on google or social media sites. If the perpetrator is pretending to be somebody you know call and confirm.
- Use ad blockers
Some adverts are tempting but you must resist. Adverts made by an attacker can install spyware or viruses into your device without your knowledge and even steal your personal information. An ad-Blocker can protect you from this threat.
- Create strong passwords
A proper password consists of uppercase letters, lowercase letters, signs and numbers. Do not use information such as your name or birthday to create your password. Most importantly keep it random and simple so you do not forget. An example of a proper password is one such as this;
WaT34m2L@n
Also do not use one password for multiple sites.
You may think saving your password to your google account is also not a security risk but do know, anything on the internet is at a security risk.
- Enable 2FA (Two-factor authentication)
Two-factor authentication is like a second layer of security. If an attacker is trying to log into your account and is able to by-pass the password level, another level will pop up asking for your authentication code. the best part of some two-step authentication is that they do not stay permanently for more than a period of thirty seconds to one minute. Third-party applications like DUO Mobile can help authenticate apps that have no authentication system.
What are cyber attacks you can fall prey to ?☹
Cyber attacks that users can fall prey to vary in number and attackers are still inventing more ways to steal personal information or destroy websites and/or applications.
- Brute Force Attack
- Phishing Attack
- Ransomware
- Spyware
- Man-In-The-Middle Attack
For more information on Cyber Attacks, take a look at this team assignment paper I and my course mates put together in the references😊.
Conclusion
Without the knowledge of internet safety practices, an individual or user can be victimized. Loosing all of ones information or assets because of not following simple internet safety guides is never worth it.
After reading this article I hope you take the time to review how truly internet safety conscious you are and take the proper methods to make sure you are.
References