Is your private data exposed online?

Every month, we hear about data breaches on some of the most used websites. Most of the time, small data breaches also occur. Is your privacy was breached? How do you know? And what can you do?

Thankfully, there is an easy way to know. Since all services require an email and a password for you to use them, you can check your email addresses and see which ones were compromised, when, on what website, and what information could have been stolen.

How to check if your email was involved in a security breach?

To get these information, use the website haveibeenpwned.com, put your email addresses, and check all the security breaches that affected your accounts. If you tend to change your passwords frequently, you may be safer than others. In case you forgot when was the last time you changed your passwords, it is safer to change it.

How to reduce the chances of having my data exposed?

To keep your data safe, you need to have a safe online behavior. I gathered 12 tips to help you stay safer online:

1- Do not use the emails that contain personal and/or professional details everywhere, have an email for fun, and an email for serious use.

2- Make sure to use a secondary email that is not used much, to secure your more active accounts and be able to retrieve them.

3- Do not use the same password everywhere, and make sure to change it frequently. If you are as forgetful as I am, keep a paper version of your passwords and update it regularly.

4- Check the websites you use carefully, make sure they are protected: if you see the lock icon and the https on the address bar, then the website is secure.

5- If you are sending sensitive data, as soon as you are done, delete the information to avoid the details getting to others in case of any future hacking. Request from your recipient to do so as well.

6- Add the minimum number of personal details, just the essentials, when using any website.

7- Use a browser add-on to check on the safety of websites, like Avira Browser Safety, so you land less on bad websites.

8- Do not download from shady websites, and check your computer all the time for viruses and malware.

9- Pay attention to the emails you receive, too many fall for scams and download malware by downloading content from spam. Even if the email says Apple, check the email address and more often than not, it will not be sent from Apple.

10- If you can afford it, buy an antivirus, Kaspersky have great products for very reasonable prices. If you cannot buy an antivirus, at least download a good one, like Avira, Avast or AVG, update them regularly and scan at least one a week.

11- Add antiviruses to your phone as well and choose carefully the apps you download.

12- Check haveiveenpwned.com regularly to see if your emails were compromised in additional breaches of security.

I wish you a safe internet trip!

Choose the right smartphone for you

With the hundreds of smartphones out there, we don’t know always what to choose. So I would like to share with you some ideas on how to choose your phone, since I am the one to choose most of the phones that my family buys.

The first thing you need to check is what do you want your phone for?
Are you a casual user? A heavy user? A gamer? A businessman/woman? A texter?
What do you need? What is useless for you?

Do not fall for the advertisements and the show-offs, sometimes we pay 200$ and it’s the phone we need, sometimes we pay 1000$ and the phone does not serve us like we want it to.
For example, there are so many new features now: the smart scroll eye tracking option, the fingerprint unlock feature, the high resolution camera, the big screens, the higher screen resolutions, the better front cameras, the extra gear you can use, etc… But which of these options do you really need? Choose first the options that you really need. Here’s an example:
– LTE or 3G? Well depends on the network you are using and your data plan. If your company is still mostly on 3G or has a weak 4G network, remember, within a year you might change phones, do you really want to pay extra for a feature you won’t use that much?
Be a bit on the cheap side, because you need to know, what you will spend now, you might regret it later. Just like when you buy a car because it looks fancy, but then discover that its gear breaks down every 4000miles. You do not need to add useless gadgets to your life, you need something useful that will last, even if it’s not the last release.

Smartphones don’t have a long lifespan, it’s a short-term investment, for a year or two. Rare are the cases where it would last any longer. The probability that you will resell it isn’t that high, as most of us end up with a broken screen, bad non-removable battery, and fast heated device or bugged device. If you actually sell it, it will lose of its value a rather large percentage, in any case it will be less than when you bought it. So how much will you be willing to invest in this item? Actually, the more important question is how much can you afford? Phone companies know that people will be pursuing the latest gadgets even if they have to pay for them in loans, which gives them room to make phones more expensive, as no matter what, they will be able to sell them! Why let them take the whole sum? You can get the same gadget after 6 months 30% off the price, and it’s still going to work for you as it was going to work 6 months ago, minus the loan, and perhaps, you might like its mini brother, as most companies are now releasing a smaller, slightly less endowed, more cost and size efficient version.

Bottom line: do not make having the latest smartphone a priority, it will hardly last with you, and if you are afraid you won’t be hip enough, it’s not about the phone you have, it’s not a small device that will make you cool or not. That’s just plain shallow.