Resolve to be tech savvy
Clean clutter, refresh, and protect yourself
Clean up and protect your data.
Know Your Stuff is a new column that unlocks the hidden secrets about the everyday products you own.
The start of a new year is the perfect time to rehabilitate bad habits. While some choose exercise or learning a second language, it’s also an opportunity to make some changes to how you interface with your personal tech.
Despite reminders of the importance of good passwords, checking our credit card statements, and avoiding phishing attempts, it’s easy to get lazy about our internet habits.
Here are five easy steps you can take to have a better, safer online life in 2020.
1. Get a password manager
Maintaining strong, unique passwords is the “flossing your teeth” of internet life: absolutely essentially and yet widely ignored.
The reason you need passwords that are both strong and unique is simple. When a major hacking occurs, the stolen information is frequently sold on the dark web to other hackers, who, in turn, try to use the data to hack accounts on other sites.
For example, if a hacker knows that “joe@fakeemail.com” used the password “abc123” on the first hacked site, they can put that information into a script that will try those credentials on 10,000 other popular sites, like banks, medical records websites, and other retailers. If “Joe” used the same credentials for multiple sites, he’s in trouble.
Don’t be Joe. Use a password manager like LastPass, which can create a unique password for every site you log into – you’ll only ever need to remember one master password. All your individual passwords are stored securely in the cloud and cannot be unencrypted, even by LastPass. It’s cheap, too, with plans ranging from free to $3 to $4 per month.
2. Consider a VPN
Your home Wi-Fi is safe (probably), as is the cellular signal from your phone’s carrier, but please, please stop connecting to public Wi-Fi networks.
If a car pulled up on the street with the word “police” written in crayon on the side, would you get in? Of course not, and yet plenty of people connect to “Starbucks Free WiFi” without any idea of who’s managing the network, watching all of your online activity and waiting for you to reveal personal data.
A virtual private network (VPN) is the ideal protection against intruders, while still allowing you to hop on free Wi-Fi networks when you really need to.
VPNs are crucial tools for journalists and political dissenters working under oppressive governments. For regular folks, they’re just an additional layer of privacy that only truly essential when using public Wi-Fi.
NordVPN or ExpressVPN are two popular and trusted choices, and trust is paramount because you have to take the VPN companies at their word when they say they’re not monitoring your web traffic.
3. Clean out your inbox
“Zero inbox,” or having no unread emails, is considered by some to be akin to achieving a state of internet nirvana. Depending on your rate of correspondence, maintaining a zero inbox may be an unnecessary distraction.
Rather, the new year might simply be a good time to unsubscribe from all that junk mail you receive. In accordance with CAN-SPAM legislation, it’s required by U.S. law that commercial email “must include a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt-out of getting email” from the company in the future. So look for an
“unsubscribe” link at the bottom of the email. If you have Gmail, use the spam filter. If you want to go one step further, the FTC has recommendations that will scale back email, snail-mail, and spam phone calls.
4. Refresh, don’t replace, old electronics
If your laptop, tablet, or smartphone is getting old, try a little rehab before condemning it to the trash pile. With a few simple steps, it’s easy to put some pep back in a computer.
A phone or tablet can be sped up simply by removing unused apps, removing old photos and other data, and turning it off and on more frequently than you used to.
5. Stop overpaying
If it’s been a while since you took a close look at the monthly statements from your cable provider, internet service, or phone carrier, it’s time.
Cable companies routinely lower their rates if you threaten to leave. If you want to cut the cord, just add up the total cost of what you’d be paying Netflix, Disney Plus, and other services. If it’s less than your cable bill, it may be time.
Check your mobile phone bill for unnecessary add-ons like insurance, and call the carrier to try negotiate a lower price. You might also save by switching to paperless billing or autopay.