A lot of security software isn’t reputable. Some programs will actually increase your risk despite branding themselves as “cleaners” or “shields” for your activities. Stick with a well-established vendor such as Total Defense and be wary of insistent warnings and aggressive installation prompts.

Say you receive an email that has typos and asks you to do something risky like visit a strange site. You click “unsubscribe,” thinking you’ll be spared any such communications in the future. In reality, you might become more vulnerable by doing so. The safest route is to simply delete the message, or blacklist its […]

If you’re sending an email or quickly checking a website on a PC or Mac, do so from a non-administrator account. That way, if something goes wrong, the permissions available to the attacker or malware will be much less extensive, stemming the potential damage.

Many social media accounts are fake and designed to harvest data through deceit. One way to see if a profile is fraudulent is by downloading its profile picture and then doing a quick Google image search to see if it’s actually a stock photo. If it is, the profile is risky to engage with and […]

Plugins used to be essential to many rich web applications, but they’ve gradually been supplanted by technologies included in HTML 5. While some sites still require add-ons like Flash, it’s more efficient and safer to uninstall them, especially considering that Adobe – which makes Flash and Shockwave – has already announced their discontinuation. Doing so […]

Older operating systems are generally less safe than newer ones, especially if they’re connected to an IP network such as the internet. If you have any devices that do not support the latest releases of their OSes (e.g., a PC that couldn’t install Windows 10), think about replacing them with something more recent.