Our Ten Commandments of Safe Computing
We could write a book (you know us) about computer safety (and we have). But we wanted to pare down our list and create a Ten Commandments of Safe Computing for you.
Our missions are to help you with your computer, help you safely navigate the web, and keep you safe from scammers and other online criminals. We want you all to enjoy your computers and your other internet-connected devices. The more you know, the less you have to fear.
Here are our Ten Commandments of Safe Computing
1. Fortify Your Defenses: Install strong antivirus/anti-malware software and keep it updated. We use and recommend Emsisoft. Emsisoft automatically updates and keeps your computer protected with a minimum amount of fuss.
2. Guard Your Gateway: Secure your home router with a unique password. Routers come with default passwords. Make sure you change yours to something strong and unique.
3. Think Before You Click: Always verify the legitimacy of websites and senders before clicking links or opening attachments. Hover over links to see the true destination URL. NEVER CLICK LINKS IN EMAILS UNLESS YOU ARE SURE YOU KNOW WHO SENT THEM.
4. Windows Updates: Don’t Procrastinate: Update your operating system whenever updates become available to patch security vulnerabilities.
5. Craft Unbreakable Passwords: Create complex passwords with a mix of upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. Make them unique for each account. And use a password manager. We recommend three. All have free versions. Bitwarden, LastPass, and RoboForm. There are others too. The important thing is to use one.
6. Beware the Online Phish: Be cautious of suspicious emails, links, and attachments. Don’t fall for phishing scams or click on unknown sources. Again… NEVER CLICK LINKS IN EMAILS UNLESS YOU ARE SURE YOU KNOW WHO SENT THEM.
7. Backup Regularly, Breathe Easy: Regularly back up your important data to an external drive or cloud storage for peace of mind. We recommend OneDrive. For $6.99 a month, you get one terabyte of cloud backup & storage space plus you get the latest version of MS365 (MS Word, MS Excel, MS PowerPoint, MS Outlook & more). Nope. Microsoft does not pay us to recommend OneDrive. We have been using it for years now and it makes moving to a new computer as easy as pie.
8. Be Wary of Public Wi-Fi: Avoid using public Wi-Fi for sensitive activities like online banking or entering passwords. If necessary, use a VPN for added security.
9. Privacy Matters: Manage Settings: Consider disabling unused camera and microphone permissions to prevent unauthorized access.
10. Scammers and scams are everywhere. If someone tries to pressure you or threaten you into acting immediately or paying with gift cards disconnect from the internet and wait a few minutes before reconnecting. If something seems too good to be true, there’s a 99.9% chance it is too good to be true.
Thanks once again for your helpful information over many years. Your Ten Commandments led me to think of my own situation. I am 94 years old and will very soon be moving into a care suite in a retirement village. I will continue to use my laptop for sensitive areas such as banking etc. I will be connecting through the village’s wi-fi and there could be many other residents as well as the village operators using the same connection. Should I use a VPN ?
It depends on whether the village’s Wi-Fi is secure or public. Do you have to enter a password to access it or can you access without a password. If the latter is true then you need to use a VPN. The easiest and least expensive way is to use a browser based VPN. If you let me what browser you’re using, I can give you a couple of good browser-based VPNs to use that are also free.
Could you please give a few free browser based VPN’s for Chrome and/ or Edge for us other folks that are interested in using this added protection ? Will these also work on Windows 10 or 11 pcs?
Thanks for your ever ending knowledge.
My apologies. I found the price information when I clicked again on the $6.99 link. If we buy the Microsoft package which included the iCloud storage, do we also need external hard drive backup? Thank you for all the information you provide to keep us computer safe.
Microsoft OneDrive and MS 365 are Microsoft products, they are not affiliated with iCloud which is an Apple product. An external drive backup is not needed if you backup using OneDrive. Thanks, Jennifer.
As per an earlier suggestion I finally opened a gmail account. The information received was that I could still use my previous account as well, but gmail would be my default account. However, I find that I can no longer open any of the folders in my previous account and have lots of stored info that is needed. Can you help? Thanks!
I have no idea what your other account is or why accessing your Gmail account online at https://www.gmail.com affects other accounts. In other words, I don’t have enough information to even guess what’s going on. I have 2 personal Gmail accounts, 1 personal Outlook.com account, 1 personal Hotmail account, 2 Outlook.com business accounts (for Cloudeight), 3 Gmail business accounts (for Cloudeight) and one Yahoo Mail account for testing purposes and none of them interfere with the other…nor should they. So I have no idea what your doing or how you’ve set up Gmail or how you’re checking your mail. More info = better answers.