THESE DAYS your privacy and security have never been under greater threat, particularly when venturing online. Whether you’re worried about malicious individuals, gangs of hackers, or even your own government, there’s never been a better time to take the steps necessary to lock down your data and modify your online behavior to protect yourself and your loved ones from the less salubrious side of the internet.
We won’t go over old ground in this feature, we hope you’ve taken our previous advice and have strong security software in place on your computer, and are already protecting your online accounts with strong, randomly generated passwords. What we will do is help you take the next steps to tighten things further.
You’ll gain practical advice on strengthening network security and employing VPNs to not only secure your online traffic but allow you to dial into your home network securely when on the road. You’ll discover how to generate disposable email addresses to protect your actual address from future data breaches, plus we’ll show you how to browse more safely, encrypt data for more secure cloud storage, and tighten email and messaging security. It’s all here, so turn the page and start taking back control.
LET’S START BY LOCKING down your online accounts. You should already be using some form of password manager to generate and store strong passwords—at least 12 characters in length combining alphanumeric characters and symbols. But if you’re truly looking to lock down your online accounts, there’s more to do.
First, make sure you only store minimal personal information in your online account—if possible, no more than email and password. It may be fiddly having to input your card details each time you check out, but this slight inconvenience far outweighs having all your personal data stolen through a data breach.
In fact, you can go one step further. While it’s almost certain your email address has already been exposed by a password breach somewhere down the line (don’t believe us? Visit and don’t panic if or when your email address is flagged up), you can minimize its future exposure by switching to disposable email addresses. These special email addresses are designed
