Now more than ever, your online safety is paramount. Thousands of cyber-attacks happen every day, and your personal details could be at risk. Nowadays, most people store a lot of personal information on devices or through online accounts, and if you don’t protect yourself, it is possible that your details could be stolen without your knowledge which can lead to dire consequences.

At Revoke, we have outlined how you can stay safe online!

Only put information that is needed online. Strangers don’t need to know about your relationship status, home address and phone number. You would never physically give out your information to strangers, so why would you online?

For social media sites, we recommend only providing the base data such as your name and ensuring your privacy settings are strict so that strangers can’t view everything that you do with your life. Many people have login details that contain something about their personal life, and publicly displaying this information could lead to unauthorised access to your accounts. In 2019, information related to 530 million Facebook accounts were exposed online for anyone to search and use.

Never have passwords that are easy to guess or use the same password across multiple platforms. It’s important to keep them varied and complex, using at least 12 characters along with a combination of letters, numbers, and symbols. In the event that your data is compromised in a breach, it will be less damaging if the data is only associated with one account, and anyone accessing this data cannot use it on other platforms.

When browsing online, make sure to look to see if there is a lock symbol beside the URL. If the site does not show this, it means that the site you are on is not secure and that you are in danger of someone else tracking what you’re doing without your knowledge. An unlocked website is now a sign that a website may be dangerous.

Most internet traffic comes from automated sources that can include bots and spammers, along with more malicious sources. Using secure websites means that you are safer from having your data accessed and keeps hackers and thieves at bay.

Ensure that the device you are using online is secure. If you are using a public internet connection, make sure to think twice before providing personal information, as these free Wi-Fi sources provide you with no control over the security. It may be worth waiting until you are on a more trustworthy connection before providing this information.

Be careful what you click. Data breaches and attacks commonly happen through malware disguised as other content, used to tempt you to click. One careless click could expose your personal data or infect your device with malware. In Britain, it has been reported that more than two-thirds of adults had been targeted in the first half of 2021 and that from April 2020 to April 2021, consumers had been scammed out of £2.3bn (and that’s just people who reported it).

Instead of giving up your searches to Google or storing them to monetise, why not give a privacy-centric search engine such as DuckDuckGo a try? It does work!