Normally my “weird holiday” posts are silly and fun, but today we are taking on a serious topic.\u00a0 Today is Safer Internet Day.<\/p>\n
We’ve all heard the horror stories of people who have been recorded without permission via webcams, folks who have been swindled out of huge sums of money by internet scammers and companies who have had huge data breaches.\u00a0 Many of us know someone who clicked on a bad link or email and had to spend serious time and \/ or money to fix the ensuing mess.\u00a0 This is a big deal.<\/p>\n
So, short of going completely off the grid how do you protect yourself?\u00a0 \u00a0Here are a few simple things you can do to keep yourself safe:<\/p>\n
#1 Make sure you have strong passwords, change them frequently, and don’t use the same password on every site.<\/p>\n
#2 Limit what you share on social media.\u00a0 If everyone knows your mother’s maiden name, your last 5 addresses, where you bank, the middle names of your siblings, your blood type, etc. how easy it is for someone to use that to impersonate you?<\/p>\n
#3 Use common sense.\u00a0 \u00a0Don’t open attachments from people you don’t know or that you were not expecting.\u00a0 Don’t click on links that you cannot verify or that come from unknown sources.<\/p>\n
#4 Make sure your antivirus and anti malware programs are up to date.\u00a0 Yes, these programs tend to ask to be updated a lot.\u00a0 That’s because there are new threats out there every hour.\u00a0 Do not put this off.\u00a0 The kitten videos will still be there in 15 minutes.<\/p>\n
Finally, I did want to mention that I do invest in software to make sure Knotty Things is a safe site for you to visit.\u00a0 \u00a0I generally only post links to previous posts of my own, but on the rare occasion I do post an outside link it will be to a safe site as well.\u00a0 In addition, I have not, and will never, have ads on my site.<\/p>\n
Be safe out there!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Normally my “weird holiday” posts are silly and fun, but today we are taking on a serious topic.\u00a0 Today is Safer Internet Day. We’ve all heard the horror stories of people who have been recorded without permission via webcams, folks who have been swindled out of huge sums of money by internet scammers and companies who have had huge data… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":705,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[24,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-advice","category-issues"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/share-key-1524927-639x426.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}