Online security is as important as ever. Hackers are always looking for new ways to gain access to your personal and financial information. In this guide, we look at a few tips to stay safe online in 2018.

Practice Good Password Management

Good password management is two-fold. First of all, you need to create a strong password. Use a mix of characters, numbers, and symbols. You will also want to change your password often and if you need to write your password down, make sure you keep the paper in a really hidden spot.

Hide your IP Address

You may want to use IP address masking to hide your geographical location or to prevent web tracking. This can be done in multiple ways such as using a Proxy server or using a VPN.

Be careful with email attachments and links

One of the most common ways to get a virus or spyware is by opening a bad email attachment or by clicking a bad link in an email attachment. If you don’t know the sender, be very careful opening any attachments. Even if you do know the sender, if the email looks suspicious, you may want to confirm with the sender that they sent the email. Email seems to get hacked very often which can cause the sender to spam out a malicious email to all of people on their contact list.

Only Browse Financial/Personal sites on your personal devices

This one is pretty straight forward. Try to avoid logging into your bank website or any other sensitive sites while on a device that isn’t your own. You never know if that device is 100% secure.

Back up your Data

If the unfortunate event happens that you get a virus or you get hacked, having a good backup of your data can help quite a bit in the recovery process. Set up a weekly, or even daily, schedule to back up your data. Automating this will make it so you won’t forget to manually start the backup process.

These are a few security tips for 2018. Know of another tip? Let me know in the comments!