Cyber Spring Cleaning
Close up holding blue wipes to clean on keyboard laptop
With six weeks to go until the first day of summer, there’s still time to complete your spring cleaning projects. A typical list of spring cleaning projects likely includes de-cluttering your living spaces and swapping your winter clothes for a summer variety. But when is the last time you “scrubbed” your digital life? Regular maintenance of your digital devices, profiles, and online identity is key to protecting yourself from the “dirt” of phishers and hackers. Below we offer a cyber spring cleaning checklist to add to your remaining your spring cleaning initiatives.
- Review your accounts and make it a habit to proactively check them on a regular basis. Make sure to read your Schwab and other financial account statements each month; once you’ve done so, shred them.
- Clean out your old email and empty deleted folders. If you need to keep old messages, move them to an archive. You may also consider unsubscribing from newsletters, email alerts and updates you no longer read. A full list of email best practices can be found here.
- Turn on two-factor authentication (2FA) on critical accounts like email, banking and social media. Get the 411 on 2FA here.
- Refresh your passwords with a structure that is not easy to guess and keep them in a safe location away from your computer. Make unique passwords for important accounts like email, finance and healthcare. Be sure all relevant devices are password, passcode, or fingerprint protected. This includes devices like your phone, tablet, internet router, and more.
- Monitor your credit report for early detection of identity fraud. You can learn more about how to conduct A Careful Review of Your Credit Report here on our website.
- Own your online presence by reviewing the privacy and security settings on websites you use to be sure they are set at your comfort level for sharing.
- Consider enrolling in IdentityForce’s robust and comprehensive service to rest assured that another set of eyes is proactively working to protect your identity, privacy, and credit.
For more healthy technology habits you can adopt this spring and the rest of this year, we encourage you to explore the following posts: