Online Security practice you should remember

We cannot stress enough how important Online security is nowadays. With the increase of online fraud and identity theft, we should likewise heighten our awareness on vulnerabilities to avoid falling victim to such crimes.

In this article, I will be sharing some security practices that will help tremendously in preserving your online banking or shopping information safe and secure. It is a good idea to make this as a "habit" when you do online banking transactions or online shopping which is the primary target of online syndicates.

Here we go...

- Never click on links for your Account sent through emails.

You may have heard of this a thousand times but still, this is the most exploited method of "phishing" sites. A lot of people still fall victim with this scam. The modus will be, the alleged "bank" will be sending the victim a notice that his account had been compromised and he needs to log-in on a given link that will take you to a FAKE website that greatly "resembles" the real one. Once you fall for the trick and enter your id and password, they will automatically log in to the real website using the details you gave and start stealing everything.

- Make it a habit of looking at the address bar.

This is not so common to everyone who does online transactions. Most of the time, users simply rely on bookmarks or "look" at the webpage itself which is really unsafe. Like what stated earlier about phishing sites, you can detect if there's something not right if you'll just pay attention to the URL instead of the web page alone. Looking at the URL for confirmation will expose the phishing site because URL's are unique so if you know the url for example your bank, it should appear exactly how it should be on the page you are in. Remember, webpages can be copied but not the URL.

- If you notice something different, CALL your bank before proceeding.

As mentioned earlier, URL's are unique and will give you a clear idea that you are in the right page. But if for some reason that the URL changed, do not proceed and call your bank for confirmation. A change in the url is a serious matter so a confirmation is really necessary. This can be a phishing attack or a legitimate change of your bank. So just to be on the safe side, make the trouble of calling your bank's customer hotline, better safe than sorry.

- Avoid saving passwords and id's on your browser.

Even if you have your anti virus/ malware properly setup and you believe that your system is clean, it's also a good practice not to store passwords in your browser or pc. This will give you another layer of protection when your security system fails and gets infected. Log-in details on forums and non critical sites can be stored but NEVER banking details.

- Do not use the same password again and again.

This is a very common case to people who visit a lot of websites. Actually, not just passwords are repeated but the entire profile from username, password, secret question, email etc.. If you are guilty of this, start making those changes now. This is very important so that if ever one of your account got compromised, the other accounts will still be safe as compared to having one password for all accounts.

- Reserve a browser exclusive for Online banking use or other important transactions.

This is another good trick. I have 5 browsers installed in my system. Firefox, chrome, comodo dragon, internet explorer and safari. I use the browsers differently depending on the task. Like for example, I do my banking transactions using comodo dragon which is stripped to bare features for security purposes, firefox for less important tasks, chrome for playing games and so on. The browser to use for banking transactions is set to "not remember cookies", no third party plugins/extensions installed, no passwords saved and used exclusively to banking transactions. That way, it is less exposed to malwares when surfing the net.

So, That's it for now. Make this a habit to ensure a safer online experience. Safe computing!