Hey everyone, Daniel here from TwinBytes with another quick tech-torial for you.
This time I've got 6 solid tips for you, on how to protect yourself from hackers.
Peoples main concerns about the computer is either that it's gonna be crashing,
it gets a virus and becomes unstable, or a hacker gets in and steals information.
There's many thing you can do to lower the risk of the computer crashing.
And your anti-virus will help protect you against any viruses, as long as it's up to
date and doing regular scans.
However in this video, I simply the complexity on how to avoid hackers getting into your computer.
So stick around...
The first one is having a good working anti-virus.
And really, as I mentioned, it's just protecting you against viruses, and one of my slogans
is that it's not a virus, it's a hacker.
Because hackers use various methods to try and gain access to your computer and social
media accounts, and whatever it is they're trying to hack into.
Viruses is just one method.
But what viruses can do, is not just to gain access to your computer, but also just to
wreck havock on it, and cause problems so that they can make the news and say they created
the next best virus that went viral, and created the most damage world wide.
Some of the real nasty viruses can not just affect your computer, but they can spread
throughout your entire network.
Whether it's at home or your business.
So actually, all of these tips in this video, are going to be important for everyone in
your business, or in your house, to follow these steps.
Because all it takes is one computer, to be the weakest link, and that computer gets compromised,
all the rest of the computers are at risk.
So #2 is Windows updates.
And if you're on a Mac operating system or even Linux, don't think this doesn't apply to you.
There are operating system updates, and they would apply to you just the same.
You want to make sure you are always up to date and the updates typically will include
a few different type of updates.
One of them ofcourse is just cool new features, that they always want to update and keep everything fresh looking.
There's performance boosts and bug fixes.
Also there's alot of security holes that need patching.
And that is the most important part of the Windows updates is making sure you get those
security patches.
#3 is software updates.
So you've got various software packages like maybe ones that are built in the computer
that came with it from the factory, or ones that you download afterwards.
Such as Google Chrome for browsing the web, or Microsoft Word or Outlook for doing your
documents and emails.
You may have some game software like Steam.
There's countless applications out there that you could have, and there's way too many to
look at manually.
But they all get vulnerabilities that need patching.
Which basically means updating the software.
As I discuss in another video that I'll link above and below, is having another software
application such as IOBit software updater and that will allow you to monitor and find
out which software is needing an update and it'll update it for you.
And although there's no one single program that can guarantee to catch all the software
programs out there that need updating, having something at least will help you, other than
just trying to manually go through everything once in a while that is honestly never gonna
happen realistically.
#4 is removing unused or unwanted software.
So there could be outdated software even and you wouldn't know there's an update available
for it because it's just not supported anymore.
So if you're not using it or it's too old, or whatever, if you're not using it.
Just remove it.
It's better to get rid of it, then you don't need to worry about whether or not there's
an update for it or if there's any vulnerabilities that can be exploited.
Piggy backing off of that is #5.
Update your outdated software.
So if you're still using Windows 7, or Office 2007, those are old expired outdated software
programs, that even though they may still work for you, they're not being patched and
managed anymore; and even with some newer stuff that is updated and managed and supported,
software developers are always looking at the next thing that's coming out.
They're looking at the newest.
So they're always gonna put more attention and support on the latest version than they
ever will on previous versions that are even still supported.
So especially if it's something that's not supported anymore, and it's that old; which
generally speaking 10 years is kinda the mark.
So if your software is 10 years older than the date that we're at now, then you're gonna
want to either remove it, or replace it or update it if it's available to do that.
So whether it's updating the software, removing or replacing any software that you have, it's
all revolving around the idea that software get vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers.
And I linked to a website and mentioned it in the other video as well, that hackers are
able to see what exploits are available on certain versions of certain software programs.
So you can easily go in there, plug in your software version...
The name of your software and the version that you're using and find out what exploits
are available for that software.
And you want to stay up to date and patched, so that that software won't get exploited
on those vulnerabilities.
Finally #6 is careful what you click.
You may see emails come in from someone that you know and it just looks a little off, the wording.
It doesn't quite sound like something that they would say.
And you already know.
I've had people call me and they're telling me, well I thought it sounded weird, but then
they clicked on it anyway.
Well, if it sounds weird, don't click it.
It's probably a scam. if you're getting an email from somebody you know, it maybe that
a hacker got into their account, and is sending an email to everyone in their address book,
using clickbait.
Lately they'll say, can you do me a favor, wait to get a response, so then they know
they got a live one.
Then they'll ask you to buy them a gift card for them, is one of the popular things.
So, anything like this; pickup the phone, call the person that emailed you.
Don't write back to them and say, hey I think your email got hacked.
Because most likely, they're not gonna get that email, it's the hacker that's gonna get the email.
Now as a bonus tip. You want to update your passwords for all your online accounts, regularly.
You can create some kind of a spreadsheet of some sort and document
when you changed your password last.
If you look into certain accounts like your Google account for example.
It'll tell you the last time that your password was updated.
But not all online accounts will give you that sort of information.
So you can keep a little sheet for yourself to not only write down for which website,
what's your email address and password, but when was the last time that you updated that password?
You can also see the complexity of the password as well,
which is a whole other video to talk about.
You may have heard so many times throughout your life already that there's only two guarantees in life.
Death and taxes.
So with everything else, we just gotta roll with the punches.
If anybody ever really wanted to hack into your computer, your network, your bank account,
your social media, whatever it is.
They're gonna relentlessly at it until they get in; and they will eventually get in, at
some point in time if you don't stay up to date with everything.
So if you cover everything that I discuss in this video, you'll be in much better shape
than the majority of people out there.
And all you need to do is try not to be the weakest link out there or the easiest target.
So share this video with your friends, family, colleagues, it's what a good friend would do.
If you did find this video helpful, please do hit that like button, consider subscribing
and ring the bell to be notified every time I come out with a new video.
Thanks so much for watching and we'll see you in the next one.
Bye for now.