Always protect your personal information.

Whether you’ve chosen a simple antivirus or a full security suite, you’ll need to renew it every year. Your best bet is to enroll in automatic renewal. With some security products, doing so enables a malware-free guarantee. You can always opt out later if you get the urge to switch to a different product.
One more thing. If your antivirus or security suite doesn’t have protection, consider adding a separate layer of protection. Many ransomware-specific utilities are entirely free, so there’s no reason not to try a few of them and select the one that suits you best.

One of the easiest ways hackers steal information is by getting a batch of username and password combinations from one source and trying those same combinations elsewhere. For example, let’s say hackers got your username and password by hacking an email provider. They might try to log into banking sites or major online stores using the same username and password combination.
Creating a unique and strong password for every account is not a job for a human. That is why you use the random password generator built into your password manager. Several very good password managers are free, and it takes little time to start using one. For-pay password managers generally offer more features, however.
When you use a password manager, the only password you need to remember is the master password that locks the password manager itself. When unlocked, the password manager logs you into your online accounts automatically. That not only helps keep you safer but also increases your efficiency and productivity. You no longer spend time typing your logins or dealing with the time-consuming frustration of resetting a forgotten password.

Try only using public Wi-Fi to surf the internet and not online shopping or logging into your financial accounts. Public Wi-Fi comes with very few security measures, this means that anyone within the same Wi-Fi network can easily access your data and steal your personal information with ease.

A VPN encrypts your internet traffic, routing it through a server owned by the VPN company. That means nobody, not even the owner of the free Wi-Fi network, can snoop on your data.

You can set up your smartphone as your primary payment device. It starts by inputting the information about your credit/debit card that you’ll use for payment. How is that better than using the credit card itself? The app generates a one-use authentication code, good for the current transaction only. Even if someone filched that code, it wouldn’t do them any good. And paying with a smartphone app eliminates the possibility of data theft by a credit card skimmer.

Multi-Factor authentication is an effective way to improve your website security significantly. It works by requiring few different login methods to access your data. It means you need to pass another layer of authentication, not just a username and password, to get into your accounts. If the data or personal information in an account is sensitive or valuable, and the account offers multi-factor authentication, you should enable it. Most password managers support multi-factor, though some only require it when they detect a connection from a new device. Enabling Multi-factor authentication for your password manager is a must.

This is especially crucial if you have your social media accounts open for the public, meaning anyone on the internet views your posts. People tend not to pay attention when posting their location, birthday, hometown, and other personal information. A good suggestion is to keep your social media accounts private and only let people you know view your content. This method dramatically reduces the risk of people misusing your personal information should you accidentally reveal them.

Before entering your personal information on a website, make sure that it indeed has an SSL certificate. To find out, you can simply look at the website address in your browser’s search bar.
Check whether there is a green padlock icon, a green bar, or HTTPS at the beginning of the URL.
Other ways to see if the website is secure is to go to their privacy policy, use contact information, or see a verified seal from web security companies.

Saved cookies, saved searches, and Web history could point to home address, family information, and other personal data. Be sure to delete browser cookies and clear your browser history on a regular basis. It’s easy. In Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Opera, simply press Ctrl+Shift+Del to bring up a dialog that lets you choose which elements of browser data you want to clear.

To prevent any unwanted loss of valuable data, conducting regular backups can keep your vital information secure.

Input a password or hide your wireless network from the public. To hide your Wi-Fi network, set up the Service Set Identifier (SSID) and make it invisible to the public. This is because Google Chrome and other web browsers will mark any website without an SSL certificate as potentially harmful.

You will need to exchange information whenever a transaction or action is made. For the data to remain secure during the transfer, you can use a Secure Socket Layers (SSL) protocol to ensure that the sensitive information transmitted is protected. This means that it helps make the checkout process safer.