JANUARY IS A GREAT TIME TO RESET,
BY ALEX KINSELLA renew, recharge and rejuvenate many aspects of our daily lives. And one of the most important of these is security.
Perhaps horror stories of email accounts being compromised or Facebook pages being “hacked” keep you up at night and keep you from diving headfirst into the world of digital technology. If so, take heart. There are a few easy steps you can take to help protect yourself.
You’re smart enough to make sure you don’t use “12345” or your birthday as your password. You’ve got uppercase, lowercase, numbers, special characters and even a birthday cake emoji thrown in there for extra measure. But there’s one more thing you absolutely must do with your accounts: enable two-factor authentication.
With two-factor authentication, you log into your favourite social network or email service as you normally would and then you’re sent a code you need to enter on the site to complete the login. These codes can be sent via text message or through an app that generates codes. Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Outlook and most other major services all offer two-factor authentication.
Most of us stay logged into our Facebook and Twitter accounts, only logging out on shared computers. If you’ve ever entered an online contest or posted a comment on a website, you’ve most likely logged in with that Facebook or Twitter account. It’s always a great idea to check what services you’ve linked to and remove the ones you don’t recognize or no longer want to link to.
I took my own advice and found I was logged into over 230 different services using my Facebook account. After the shock wore off, I spent over an hour removing the majority of them.
My day job exposes me to many of the