[Politics_Observer]

Top Three Things to Stay Safe Online

The top 3 things you can do to enhance the security of your laptop, desktop, smartphone, tablets and devices are as follows:

1. Keep the operating system up to date with the latest patches at all times. Make sure you constantly keep your operating systems patched up and that they are supported. Don't use unsupported operating systems. Constantly update your system that you use for online activity. Keeping your system constantly patched up helps to keep you protected from the latest known exploits.

On the darkweb, cyber-criminals sell exploit kits that can be used against unpatched systems. They also sell zero day exploits for astronomical amounts of money too and zero day exploits are threats that are not yet known. However, keeping your systems constantly patched up, patches your system vulnerabilities against known threats that have recently been discovered that many of those exploit kits sold on the dark web seek to exploit to hack into your system.

2. Use unique passwords for each and every account you have both on your device and on the internet. Don't re-use the same passwords on various different apps, accounts or online accounts.

3. Use two factor authentication, preferably token based two factor authentication. For your personal devices, you can use Yubikey as a token based two factor authentication. You can check out Yubikey here if you like: https://www.yubico.com/ . Now, you can also use the Google Authenticator App for apps, web applications and accounts that do not support token based two factor authentication, but using token based two factor authentication is stronger 2 factor authentication than using the Google Authenticator app as your second factor authentication. However, the Google Authenticator app is better than nothing and some apps or accounts do not support token based 2nd factor authentication but for those that do, use token based two factor authentication.

Anti-virus, visiting only known websites or deleting cookies is NOT the top 3 things you can do to keep yourself safer online. However, having and doing those things in addition to those top 3 things will certainly help enhance your security more. Using strong passwords for each of your unique passwords you have would come in 4th place and would make the top 4 list though it's not in the top 3 list.