Safe browsing habits
If you spend a lot of time browsing the web or have ever gotten a virus, you may have heard someone mention the term safe browsing habits. We mention this term often to our clients, but most people don’t really have an idea as to what these are. So below are some tips on just how to keep you safe while on the web. Once you’ve mastered them, you can feel far safer while surfing.
Visiting Safe Websites – This is one of the most important tools in your arsenal against viruses and attempts to steal your information. With the incredible amount of information out there on the web, it’s easy to get caught up by clicking on link after link to cruise around. This is a very dangerous practice to do, because along the way you will almost certainly click on some website that used to be one thing, but now is owned by someone less scrupulous. It’s important to try and stay to well-known sites with a good reputation. Places like Amazon.ca, Wikipedia.org, or even CBC.ca are well moderated and protected by their administrators, and can find you virtually any information you may need on a day to day basis. If what you’re looking for can’t be found in these places, try to limit the amount of independent sites you visit for your info. Do a little research into a company’s background before purchasing from them. All these extra little steps are extremely important in protecting yourself.
Use a proper, and fully updated antivirus – One of the most important components of the average user’s computer is an efficient and well rated antivirus solution. From our own tests and research, we recommend ESET’s NOD32. You can download a 30 day trial for free from our main page. Antivirus software is a very important, pro-active step towards protecting yourself from a large variety of threats. Of course, no antivirus solution will give you perfect, blanket protection. This is why it’s important to use the rest of these tips as well.
Never download anything that isn’t well vetted and documented – The internet is a haven for helpful, useful, and sometimes free software. There are millions of great programs and utilities out there that can make your life a lot easier. The problem is however, there are a lot of software packages out there that are more dangerous than helpful. If a program is offering you any kind of free content or services that most companies would make you pay for, it is more than likely a virus or some sort of malware. The best way to be sure what your downloading is safe is to download it from a reputable site. The two best places for this is FileHippo.com & CNET.com. Both these companies are pretty good about keeping the bad stuff away, while offering the good stuff with decent download speeds. Stay away from little unknown sites, or sites that offer free programs that claim to do incredible or even illegal stuff. If a program offers you free movies or games for instance, it’s probably a virus, spyware, or other form of malware.
Keep your computer up to date! And then keep it even MORE up to date! – I mentioned this in our last article as well, but I feel it is so important that we’re going to say it again. One of the biggest vulnerabilities to the average user is an out of date computer. Microsoft and Apple often release updates to their systems to protect against flaws that viruses take advantage of. This is especially important when it comes to web browsers like Internet Explorer or Safari. Update your system each and every time an update is released.
These are just a few of the things you can do to stay safe. Want to know more? Feel free to research it yourself, or drop us an email with our contact form. We’d be happy to answer any questions or concerns you have. And if you think some baddies have already gotten on your machine, we can help you get that cleaned up as well.
