Did you know that computer hackers were one of Time Magazine’s runners up for Person of the Year in 2016? There are many people out there trying to corrupt computers and get information from innocent computer users. Not only that, but sometimes programs can have bugs that eat your data, or sometimes your computer just dies on you. Suddenly you don’t have access to your own information, important documents, or your website data.
What are you supposed to do when these things happen? When you lose all of your data? It can be difficult to recover from this if you didn’t take steps to protect and save your computer or website data. Here are three ways you can protect your data. You will always want to keep these in mind.
Backup Your Computer Regularly
Backing up your computer to an external device is extremely important. It’s the same principle as backing up and syncing your iPhone to your iTunes program on your Mac or PC. You can and should do the same thing with your computer. This way, if your computer finally bites the dust on you, you can recover all of your items and downloads onto your next computer.
But what if your computer had a problem and it ate data? You can use a data recovery software, or (after you’ve fixed the bug) can re-download everything you lost via your backup. Backups of your computer are extremely useful, and if you’re not backing up your computer data already, you should start doing so right away.
Tough and Different Passwords
When websites ask you to make a password that’s hard to guess — with one capital letter and a number — they’re not doing it to be annoying. They’re doing it to protect your precious data. Once a hacker gets into your account, they can get to several pieces of information depending on what they hacked into. They could possibly have access to several email accounts, and even more importantly, credit card numbers or bank accounts. This is especially true if you have the same password for several different accounts on several different websites.
Make sure you have different passwords for everything, and make sure they’re hard to access. This won’t guarantee protection, but it will definitely help.
Don’t Click Every Advertisement
On almost every website you go on, there’s some kind of advertisement. Sometimes it’s GoogleAd Sense, and it’s a way for the website owner to make money. Sometimes it’s links to different websites with clickbait article.
Sometimes those clickbait articles or those advertisements can look enticing, but they can cause serious harm to your computer if you’re not careful. Sometimes those ads you see on the sides of websites, or at the bottom of pages, are designed to give your computer a virus or spyware. These can make your data inaccessible to you, but extremely accessible to the hacker who provided those links. Don’t click on every advertisement you see — especially advertisements that look suspect in anyway.
Don’t Give Out Every Detail Of Your Life
It’s easy to overshare on social media. However, the more you share, the easier you make it for someone to hack into your computer, or into your website accounts. Try to keep important information a secret.
These aren’t foolproof tips. People can still get to your data, and your computer can still break down, or even your backup system may still break down. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do. However, you can take steps in the right direction to protect your important documents, your data, your passwords, and your private information.
