By Nicholas S. Alexander
The Internet has come to a point now that it’s part of each and every one of our daily lives. We connect to one another through social media websites, chat messengers and email to converse; we complete transactions involving our credit and bank information for things we want or need; we play games and watch videos for entertainment and much more; though there’s one thing most of us don’t think about often enough while using the Internet. That thing is our security.
You may be wondering why security is so important. Here’s a scenario why! Imagine that you’re on your favorite social media website communicating with your grandparents that you so dearly love and adore. While chatting you take a moment to check out a pop up that caught your eye. You decide to click on it and at that moment you suddenly get logged out. Confused, you decide to log back in and at that very moment you’re told that your password was incorrect. While trying to login you get a phone call from your grandmother. She’s crying and insists that you answer to why you said such terrible things. Still confused, you pause and realize that your account has been compromised. You manage to calm your grandmother down but are infuriated over that pop up you just clicked.
Although that particular scenario is rather extreme, my point is that you can never predict the severity of an attack. It’s best to take action before attacks occur, so here are the best practices you can take to start protecting yourself.
Got Internet Security or Antivirus software? You never know when malicious content will try to sneak into your computer. Start by protecting yourself with one or the other, it doesn’t matter if it’s free or costs an arm and a leg. Start now! It’s better to have something than nothing!
One of the best things you can do to protect yourself is to make your passwords secure. Don’t store your passwords anywhere besides your brain and don’t be afraid to challenge yourself with the complexity of them. Don’t break the golden password rule, that rule is to never give anyone your password! A secure password reduces the chance of an attacker figuring out your password.
Be careful what you put out there! Everything you put on the Internet stays on the Internet. Not only is that a problem but that information could potentially be viewed by anyone. Use caution over the amount of information you allow others to see. Putting too much out there might just net you into some big trouble like identity theft. The less that’s out there the more you protection you have!
Avoid clicking pop-ups and other advertisements. Most pop-ups and advertisements are misleading and only have poor intentions. One of the best things you can do is download an add-on or extension for your web-browser such as AdBlock. AdBlock does exactly what its name suggests. It blocks ads, especially the annoying ones!
It’s never a bad idea to have multiple email accounts for different things; consider having one for important emails and another for potential spam. Keeping spam away from your important mail scales down the chance of accidentally opening up harmful attachments and other junk!
Keep yourself up to date! Keeping your computer up to date is one of the most important things if not the most important to keeping yourself protected. Each update released fixes a number of potential bugs and exploits!
Got your doubts? Check it out! It can never hurt to research a website before going there! Websites like Norton Safe Web or even Google can help with determining whether a site is safe or not!
It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this knowledge and keep yourself protected! Spread the word!

Nicholas S. Alexander is a member of the Computer Technology Senior Seminar course and is planning on a career in Information Technology. If interested in learning more about me or finding this article online visit http://www.nicholassalexander.com!