10 Easy Ways to Boost Your Online Security!

Just about everyone these days knows that the internet can be a pretty dangerous place to browse if you are not careful. With all the trojans, viruses, infected websites, scams, it seems that it is near impossible to keep yourself completely safe unless you just keep your computer unplugged from the internet. With all these threats to worry about, this doesn’t even include all the bad things that can come through email or instant messaging programs!

What makes it worse is that the people who out there making all the bad and dangerous stuff on the internet do it for a couple different reasons. A few of them being to steal your personal information (such as bank information, credit card numbers or usernames and passwords), try and scam you with bogus software, or just mess up your computer for the fun of it because they can. I like to call these people “the bad guys”.

While there are a ton of people out there making these bad programs and websites, there are also a big number of people who are on the other side writing software and various tools to help protect your computers as well as clean them if they have gotten infected.

Most users don’t realize that just having an antivirus program is not usually enough to keep you safe from all the bad things that our out there trying to get into your system. I found an great article that talks about 10 pretty simple ways to increase your online security so you don’t have to worry when browsing the web or checking your email. So lets get on to the list!

1. Augment your anti-virus tool
2. Switch to plain text mail
3. Don’t click mail links
4. Vet your email
5. Switch web browser
6. Check web sites before you visit
7. Manage your passwords
8. Screen all downloads
9. P2P basics
10. Create a virtual sandbox

These 10 things are a great start to help keep your PC safe from a majority of the threats that are out there lurking in the shadows of the internet. While these aren’t fool proof, they can help the average user stay away and avoid all together most stuff that can harm their computers.

For a description of each of these 10 ways to further protect yourself, head over to this article on techradar.com to read up on each of these steps.