According to Forbes Seventy eight percent of individuals use the same password for more than one account. Fifty two percent use it for at least three accounts, and four percent use it on at least eleven. Preston explained that using the same password is a problem. Once one account is compromised, a significant number of your accounts can be taken if you have repeated passwords. You can lose access to a large number of your accounts. 

“Well, if the password you’re using to get into your bank account is the same password you’re using to access your Chipotle account, and that Chipotle account has a security breach, and the bad guys get access to your password. They now have your access. They now have your password to your bank account,” Preston said.

However, Preston acknowledged that it is hard to remember passwords for all accounts. Preston suggested using a password manager. Password managers keep your passwords managed and secured, allowing you to edit them in case you have changed your password. Letting you remember them without having to go back into your memory. Google has a password manager for free, in order to access your Google password manager, you go to manage your google account, security & sign-in, scroll down all the way, then you will find it. Add passwords to any websites you are logged into. Another way of being secure, is Authenticator applications, using these applications will put two step verification on any account once you connect your app to the account.

In the past, many people often looked for free Wi-Fi. However, connecting to the public internet is just as dangerous as telling your information to someone directly. That puts you at risk and your devices at risk. People can install different Wi-Fi routers to try to misguide individuals and get your information. According to McAffe, forty percent of people who’ve connected to public Wi-Fi have had their public information compromised and stolen.

“There’s no monitoring going on. There’s no security. And I avoid public Wi-Fi where I can. The best thing to do is to connect to a hotspot on your phone,” Preston said. “They could put a Wi-Fi router, and the men’s bathroom at Starbucks, and you connect to it, thinking you’re connecting to a Starbucks network and you’re not.”

Surfing around the web can be dangerous if you’re not cautious, you could risk downloading a virus, or malware. A way to counter these attacks is by downloading antivirus software. According to AVG, there are around one hundred ninety thousand new malware attacks every second, and nearly ninety percent of all cyber threats are phishing or other social engineering schemes.

     “You need to have those (virus protection) on your devices. and run those daily so that they are detecting,” Preston said. “Your odds are that many of us will never pick up on the fact that we have some sort of virus or malware software. We need technology to do that for us. Now, things that you can be on the alert for, if your computer starts to slow down and performance issues.”

If your computer gets infected with malware or a virus, you can back it up. If you have a cloud, you can save it. However, it’s not always safe, as the malware could stick to the cloud. 

“If you have a cloud account, use that; you can use that as a backup. It’s not necessarily a backup in the technology world process,” Preston said. “It is a backup of your data. Just because you back up, though, doesn’t make that data safe.”  However Preston did caution that the malware can still be on the impacted data.

Each year, people’s identities are stolen online.  This puts people’s bank accounts, credit cards and their future credit at risk. Make sure to check your credit, and make sure you haven’t gone down in credit.  Even teenagers should check their credit.  It is not uncommon for children’s credit to be stolen. According to security.org, adults over forty five are significantly more likely to be victims of credit card fraud; seventy percent of respondents aged forty five through fifty nine and sixty nine percent of those aged sixty plus have experienced fraud, compared to just forty seven percent of adults aged eighteen through twenty nine.

“You go to annualcreditreport.com. You can register, and you can get your credit history. It doesn’t cost you anything. to check it,” Preston said. “It doesn’t cost you anything to get an account. It’s not going to impact your credit. But you can go register, get an account, and look at your credit history, and it won’t impact you.”