It’s hard to be safe online. Why make it easy for hackers?

Data breaches, phishing, identity theft, skimming, malware, password leaks… the online world is getting darker and more dangerous with each passing day. Yes, it’s now exceptionally convenient to store your profile data — including your passwords, shipping address and credit card info — on any site with a paywall and an https protocol, with the ‘s’ supposedly suggesting that the said site is ‘secure’. But are all such websites really secure?

Facebook has it, doesn’t it? That social media platform where a security breach engendered by poor security exposed accounts of 50 million users last year. The one which acknowledged last week that it ‘accidentally published’ 1.5 million individuals’ email contacts without their approvals. The same site that was embroiled in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, having allowed the political consulting firm to harvest personal data of millions of users without their consent and use it for political purposes. Considering that your friendly neighbourhood Facebook can boast of the https protocol, it’ll be safe to conclude that the ‘s’ in the https before a site’s web address doesn’t necessarily make it secure. So how do you tread the online realm in a, well, secure manner? Now that’s a multi-million-dollar question, and there are tonnes of (online) cyber-security tips available.

As a first step, you must acknowledge that your safety is in your own hands. A password that reads Your_Kid’s_Name_123 doesn’t help, neither does the fact that you’ve been using the same password for Facebook, your Gmail and, God forbid, your bank account. Also, isn’t your personal info meant to be personal? Why make it public for a few ‘likes’? Privacy may already be dead in the online world, but it won’t hurt to keep enhanced privacy settings while browsing sensitive sites like your bank’s (even Facebook). Using a public WiFi connection is like walking through a dangerous neighbourhood in the dark. Do it only if you must, and take due precautions. And, finally, enable two-factor authentication for anything that allows such security — it isn’t convenient, for sure, but the trade-off with security is definitely worthwhile.