We all spend an increasing portion of our time online, whether this is part our employment, studies or personal life.
We all need to take responsibility for our own "Digital safety". It is important to recognise that our behaviour may leave us open to threats to our reputation, privacy, finances or general wellbeing.
There are a number of simple things we can all do to protect ourselves while online.
The following are our top six tips to ensure your digital safety.
Passwords are one of the most important lines of defence you have in protecting yourself online from hackers and fraudsters. Unfortunately many of us do not use strong passwords, we sacrifice our safety for the ease and convenience of something that is easy for us to remember, often using the same passwords for multiple applications and websites.
Ensure that you have up to date antivirus software on your devices. For students with an iPad, regularly check that your are using the latest iOS.
It is impossible to anticipate when a device might break or be lost or stolen so it is important for you to always keep a backup of any important documents. There are two main types of documents you need to backup,
Protecting your mobile or tablet device is essential as they do as much traveling around as you do and tend to house lots of your important personal data. Here are some important areas to be be aware of.
Phising is a term to describe a bogus email sent to you from a criminal that pretends to be from another organisation (usually banks, shops, government department etc.) in order to trick you into give them your personal details. These can be very sophisticated and convincing, often the use the same company logos and similar email addresses. Here is our advice for spotting a phising email.