7 Steps to Stay Safe Online | Rules to Follow while Using Internet

Internet use has become an essential part of our lives. Almost everyone nowadays benefits from the digital world. Besides these benefits, one of the most critical problems of internet usage is the security question. How can we stay safe while using the internet? 

Paying bills, setting up an appointment, shopping, communication, and many other activities make us depend on the Internet more and more. Since many of us work from home now and connect with our colleagues over the Internet and communicate socially with friends, having more interaction with the Internet becomes certain. 

The more we depend on the Internet to conduct our work and personal needs, the more we expose ourselves to risks. What are those risks, and how do we stay safe?

The three major risks are:

1. Unauthorized knowledge by others of our information
2. Receiving wrong or false information
3. Invasion and occupation of our computers by outside software

Separate Facts from Assumptions

One of the biggest challenges about safety on the Internet is that you may not find out about it until afterward, when something like identity theft happens. Look at your Internet habits. Become aware of what you have been assuming is true and what really is.

Step One: Know Who You Trust

It is not quite the same as knowing who you can trust, though it is related, of course. But hackers and data thieves are always looking and hoping for carelessness and misplaced trust. Social engineering is all about getting you to respond quickly through panic or greed by using psychological manipulation to trick users into making security mistakes or giving away sensitive information. 

Think carefully about what emails you open and the links they contain. Be careful of pop-up ads, especially if they seem to offer huge discounts but only for a short time.

On social media, you may get a “friend” request from someone you have never known. Do you intend to accumulate hundreds or thousands of “friends” or “followers”? Beware for every person you connect with; some of them may be hoping you will give them clues about where you live, what you do, how much you own, and much other personal information. 

Step Two: Watch What You Believe

There are many sources of “information” on the Internet. Some of them may have varying degrees of bias, and some may be pranks. But the most popular one nowadays is fake news which causes a great deal of public confusion. 

For instance, according to Pew Research Center, after a fake news story in June 2017 reported Ethereum’s founder had died in a car crash, its market value was reported to have dropped by $4 billion. In Tom Rosenstiel’s words, “Misinformation is not like a plumbing problem you fix. It is a social condition, like crime, that you must constantly monitor and adjust to.” 

Step Three: Know What Information You Share

Pay attention to what information an email or website asks for. An email may claim that a ride-sharing or food delivery service made a charge to your credit or debit card. The amount may be large to make you panic and act quickly. It offers a button or link to click to investigate or contest it, or they may ask for your account number to “confirm” that you are the person they meant to notify.

On social media, think twice about what you post and how widely available it will be. If you have children or teenagers, they can be incredibly careless or casual in sharing information or opinions that may emerge later – years later – to blight their career or reputation. Or yours.

Step Four: Know How You Share It

Sometimes you don’t have to tell information to share it. Your computer may do it for you. And it may not stop.

Just clicking on a link in an ad or an email can give someone your email address, which they sell to someone else. Or it can connect you with a computer that knows how to find out your IP address and look up your identity in a DNS server. (That information may also be sold.)

That other computer may use that connection, however brief, to download software into your computer, which may look in your files to find your accounts and their login credentials and secretly send them back. Or it may use your processor to do work in the background for someone else. “Bitcoin mining” is one form of this that has grown enormously during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Step Five: Use A Firewall to Avoid Intrusion into Your PC

Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) may provide a firewall to protect you from unauthorized access by other computers. Microsoft Windows has enhanced its Defender software in recent years, and there are numerous free or paid Internet security programs available. These can help prevent malicious software from being installed or alert you if it has been. 

If you have a firewall or security program, try not to delay installing updates if you are notified of them. “Zero-day” exploits have sometimes caused massive damage to large organizations – including ransomware attacks – simply because they were told there was an update to fix a problem but had not installed it yet. 

Step Six: Use a VPN To Avoid Public Monitoring

A VPN (Virtual Private Network) can help you increase your online safety and privacy when surfing the internet, not just from hackers, but also from government, and telephony operators per DNS Leakage. 

The Internet is a massive network of “server” computers, and information gets routed from one to another until it reaches its goal. Your smartphone or computer puts information in “packets,” which each has a different header. These headers tell servers where the information came from and where to send it, so-called IP (Internet Protocol) address. 

The IP addresses assigned to you, your computer or mobile device, can be looked upon as a “DNS server.” The servers that handle your packets may look up your IP address and sell information about you. This is how you can click on one ad about a product and keep seeing ads about it for weeks afterward. Unfortunately, this can include your ISP servers. 

A VPN prevents servers from accessing this data. It installs a client program on your computer, which provides end-users or client machines with secure connectivity to the VPN server.   

Your data packets remain both encrypted and “encapsulated.” The VPN client encrypts the information in each package. It includes the header with your actual IP address. 

It uses a key that only your computer and the VPN server know. Then it puts this inside another packet with different headers that don’t point to you. The servers that handle these packets cannot trace them to you. 

Finally, besides how a VPN works and what advantages it has, it is also important to be positive about the performance of your VPN. You can always examine the efficiency of your VPN to ensure how successfully it works and how it provides you online safety. 

Step Seven: Know What Is on Your Computer

The next major risk that we all face on the Internet is having hidden software or files on our computers. Clicking on email links or visiting unfamiliar websites, a remote computer may send software that installs itself without our knowledge. This software may be a “bot” (short for “robot”) that uses our computer to do the same to others.

You may think you have carefully defined what folders can be shared, but some malware can secretly change that. You could end up with someone else downloading pirated music or software – or even child pornography – onto your computer via torrents; eventually, you could face civil litigation or criminal charges for things you did not know were there.

While firewalls, properly set, can protect against this, sometimes there is no substitute for being aware of what directories or folders are on your computer and what files they contain. Make a habit of browsing your File Explorer (or the equivalent) periodically, looking for things you don’t recognize.

Conclusion

Awareness, on a regular basis, is the key to online safety. Everything you do in your digital world has an impact on your real world, both your activities and your communication. That is why it is crucial to be aware of what you do and who you communicate with. 

Your and your family’s online safety is an essential part of your life. Consider using a VPN on your device to protect against servers “sniffing” your data stream and maintain the safety you seek. It is well worth the effort to follow these seven basic steps to stay safe online.