We are all the gadget generation. It doesn’t matter if you are the Baby Boomers or the Millennials. In fact, “today about half the adult population owns a smartphone.” (“Planet of the phones,” The Economist). Sure, there are 4.4 billion people in the world that still don’t have the internet and America does not top the stats as the number 1 region using the internet (Asia takes number 1 with Europe at 2). However, many Americans do connect to the internet every day (if not every hour) and we don’t always think about all of the data at our hand (“Internet Users in the World by Geographical Location” graph, Internet World Stats).
The fact is that if you have a family of four, you probably would need more than two hands to count the number of internet-connected devices in your house. I have three: my iPhone, my Google Chrome laptop, and a somewhat Smart TV. I am a one person household. My parents own two computers, two Smart phones, and, you guessed it, two Smart TVs.
But I wouldn’t say that the more people there is in the household, the more risk. It comes down to what you’re doing as a household with your data. Are you running security updates? Are you clearing your browser cache after you visit your credit card company to pay your monthly bill? More importantly, do you have a secure password in place for your home wireless network?
When I first moved into my house, my computer immediately picked up one of my neighbor’s wireless connections. I was shocked. They had the default name of their wireless box and they were completely open to the public. I don’t know who the neighbor was that wasn’t securing their network. It’s been four years, but I hope that if I pulled up their network, it would be password protected, because in today’s day and age, who wants to use an unprotected network, whether it’s your home or Starbuck, to pay your bills. No one, I hope.
March is our Spring Cleaning month so here’s what I want you to do for your cleaning activities on your personal desktop and mobile devices:
- Ensure all of your devices have a user account that requires login. If your laptop just automagically opens to your desktop, that’s not a good thing.
- Reset your passwords on all devices, including the password for your mobile phone and your password for running updates. How many of you have given your password to someone to unlock your phone while you are driving? How many of you still have the same security password for downloading apps and running security patches you had when you joined the Smart generation?
- Clean up your desktop. Clutter is clutter is clutter. There’s no need to have your desktop full of photos and documents. Organize them in a file structure.
- Remove unused apps or programs from your devices. If you’re not using that default Solitaire game, why bother having it?
- Clear browser history on both your desktop and mobile device. You can automatically set this to happen when you close your internet browser. I do that so that I don’t forget and, honestly, with e-mail as an App at this point on my phone, it’s a good test of my password memory skills on the laptop.
- Do not make yourself universally connected. It may make life easier to have an App for your Credit Card or to use Apple Pay, but the more connected you are, the more risks. However, alert notifications are a must for your credit card so that you can be informed on if your card has been stolen.
- Run all security updates on all your devices at home. Even your Smart TV should trigger you to run updates. You’ll have to shut down your computer and stop using your phone for a bit, which may be hard, but it will be worth it.
- There are so many factors to consider when spring cleaning that we can often forget that technology is just another way to become a pack rat. Remove old files and photos you no longer need. You can always back up photos in flickr and documents in Google Drive. By leaving everything on your phone, you are limiting the amount of space needed to run the critical updates that are needed on your computer or mobile device. Plus, a device is a device. If it dies, which it will, you don’t want your whole last three years of vacation trip photos disappearing.
There are so many ways in which to improve your data footprint. Read Robert Siciliano’s “15 tips to Spring Clean Your Digital Security” for even more ways to dust, Windex, and polish your information, and then e-mail us with your completed to do list. Plus, watch the following video from the Federal Trade Commission on backing up files on your computer.