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Welcome to Security Steps, Other Things. This page contains information for other programs and things you can do to help secure your computer that do not come under one of the other topics in Security Steps. Some of these are mentioned on the main security steps page. If you don’t understand what a certain word means take a look at I Security Dictionary. This page is quite big so click one of these topics to get there directly: Use Secure Passwords, Change Passwords Regularly, Keep It To Yourself, Test The Security Software and Use Your Head Use Antispam Software Spam is unsolicited email thats usually used for marketing purposes. We don’t think Antispam software is the most important thing because quite a lot of ISP’s filter spam. Yahoo Mail and Hotmail both filter spam as well. The importance of Anti-spam software depends on the volume of Spam you receive. If you receive lots then its very important to have it installed. If you hardly get any spam its still an added bonus to have a spam filter installed. TIP: The golden rule when dealing with junk email is NEVER reply to the sender. If you do the spammer will know that your address is active and send you more junk mail. You may still receive Junk Email from the spammer, but its better to decrease the odds of getting more than increasing it by replying. When we say reply, this could include writing a message back, bouncing the email back, unsubscribing from the emails, etc.
Almost everything to do with your computer needs a password. You need a password to log on, you need a password to collect your email, you need a password to log into your online back, etc. If you have so many passwords, you need them to be secure. People who want to get at your data have sophisticated programs and methods of cracking passwords, so if your password isn’t secure say bye to your personal data. So what is a secure password you ask? An example of a secure password would be NyHijkLL;)+=YhjSd””?GgFfDesGY. Say your name is Tony and your married to Andrea and you have a dog called Benjy, an example of a weak password would be tonyrocks or andreaandtonyforever or ourdogbenjy. Try to use something that nosy people or hackers can’t figure out easily. Your still Tony at the moment and you still want a password thats easy to remember. Examples of easy passwords to remember and are secure for Tony are 65738AeRDna++tONY876214eva. This password still has Tony and Andrea forever in but its more secure than tonyandandreaforever because Andrea is spelt backwards, its a mixture of capitals and lowercase letters, it contains random numbers and it has other characters apart from letters and numbers. The password would be even better if it didn’t have anything to do with anyone or anything in your family, but as long as you alter the text and add symbols, etc it should be suitable. Tip: When creating passwords, try to choose something that has nothing to do with your family or pets, etc. Use uppercase and lowercase letters, use a mix of letters and numbers and add symbols. This will make your passwords extremely hard for anyone to crack. Now that you have a secure password its important its stays secure. A password won’t stay secure forever so you should change it regularly. Once every month is best but you can get away with once every two months. Change the most important ones such as banking passwords more frequently. Tip: A password doesn’t stay secure forever, change it regularly! When out surfing on the Internet, don’t just hand your name and address details to any site that asks for them. You should check the sites Privacy Policy and make sure the form you use to send you details is secure. The form on our site isn’t secure but we don’t ask for address details or telephone numbers, we just ask for a name or nickname and your email address. Another important thing is to NEVER tell anyone your passwords. And most important of all, don’t give your Credit Card details to any site without checking that the site is secure and trustworthy. For more information on protecting your identity and how to recover if an emergency arrives, please see the Online Fraud section of our Recovery page. Fair enough you have security software installed but what if its not detecting spyware, viruses, trojans or worms as it should? What if your firewall isn’t keeping you totally hidden? The answer is to check that your software is doing its job. We recommend that you check your software every month but you can get away with every two months. To check your software, there are a variety of online scans available. Visit our Online Tests article from February 2004 to find links to a variety of online scans. Tip: When performing Online Virus scans, most scans ask you to use Internet Explorer. If you are using a different browser, you may have to switch to or download and install Internet Explorer. Some scans let you download plugins so that the scans will work with other browsers. We can’t stress the importance of using your head when your browsing the internet. We mention this point very often because it is so important. Just think about your actions before you do them. We don’t mean thinking before you move the mouse, we mean just think before you download things and before you open attachments. Just taking the extra precautions could stop you wasting time removing unwanted things from your computer. Your brain is the greatest tool you have when using your computer. Many of the other Security Steps pages will probably have given you a good idea of the does and don’ts but you have to remember these and put them into action yourself.
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