What Security Tips Could Experienced Hackers Give To Their True Friends?

The majority of people picture themselves, hackers, as evil masterminds from popular movies or pop-culture antiheroes like in Mr Robot. Still, some of the highly experienced hackers are open to sharing some of their useful tips with you to make sure that you don’t face those using you for their benefit.

The following tips aim at showing you the necessity of taking precautions even if you think that your system is safe and updated. Additionally, you may fact-check yourself if you follow the tips on the advanced level of using a computer or having certain expertise in the field.

So, the experienced hackers would ask their true friends to:

Learn Your Safety Basics

You may find it a no-brainer, but the University of Michigan research stated that numerous students fail to follow the very basic rules of maintaining their Internet security. Thus, watch out for your public Wi-Fi space and take precautions. 

1. Do not access non-trusted free Wi-Fi in your local coffee shops, libraries, hotels, and airports. Always remember, that public Wi-Fi is always less secure than your own, and imagine how many people potentially use it all over the place.
2. Do not perform heavily private, financial, or id-included operations through public Wi-Fi. Have you forgotten to perform a money transfer? Are you checking your bank account? Are you having a private conversation with your relative containing your private data? Think again if this chat cannot be performed at any other time.
   Watch out for the dangers of disclosure and check the URL you are dealing with. If it doesn’t contain https – your connection is NOT secure. 
3. Turn off extra applications as they might affect your privacy. Have you noticed how often you forgot to turn off your GPS, geo-tracking, or grant permissions to the third-party applications to collect your data? This point should be reconsidered once you travel or have to perform tricky operations through the public hotspots.

Do Not Treat Your Protection Lightly

Once you’ve taken the most obvious risks from your device, you should create your own protective shield. This will not take much time but the following info will definitely save you much trouble as you will be protected both in your private network and outside of it.

Therefore, make sure that your system has:

1. Proper antivirus and firewall. Yes, it may sound moralizing, but the better your antivirus is, the less likely you will get spyware, malware, and PUPs. What is more, you should always check if your security software is downloaded through the authorized sites or directly from the software developers.
   If you are not willing to pay full price for your internet protection, cheaper options for the preferred software are here. Do not ever try to download keygens, previously used keys, or cracks online, they likely contain the very threats you wish to protect your system from.
2. Reliable passwords for your accounts and apps. Improvise! And do not feel ashamed of writing down your passwords elsewhere outside your computer or a gadget. It is better to create a unique, 8-character-long, and heavily random password you will remember rather than using the same repeating password each time you create a new account.
   Stay away from repetition, change passwords yourself but do not forget to note them down or be sure you will recollect them in case of emergency.
3. Regular tests run for weaknesses. It is known that no device is actually 100% secure 24/7. However, it does not mean that you should fully count on your threat autodetect from your antivirus or Windows Defender.
   The best way to spot vulnerability or capture a threat is to take your own measures in taking it down. On your day off, do not hesitate to spend several useful minutes searching for the unwanted threats yourself (manual detect).
4. Overwriting the deleted files tool. This type of protection is an ultimate fake-out for the potential spyware within your system. Overwrite your files from your technological trash bin with the built-in Cipher feature. You can find it through your search option in your Windows and overwrite the deleted files so that anyone would not be able to take any information for the outdated files.

Do Not Trust Anyone

Lastly, you are already protected and knowledgeable, you should become like a true hacker and show less trust to those with whom you talking to online. Are you sure you do not contact anyone from the Dark Web? Advertising Age reports that by 2015 more than $18.5 billion were defrauded through bots and DoS attacks worldwide. Therefore, you equally should pay attention to whom you are talking to online.

First of all, do not follow third-party links and attachments. If you do not plan to download the application or find a random .exe file somewhere it was not supposed to be, keep away from loading them into your system. Remember, this is another way of distributing DoSes and viruses to your computer.

Additionally, suspicious links might bring a lot of spam and trouble if you are in a hurry and accidentally open some of them. 

Secondly, mark out the fakes. Trace, if your opponent is not a bot, a troll, or openly fake account created for advertising, DDoSing, or hacking.

The current statistics show that even Facebook has more than 88 million fake profiles that the support does not manage to remove or verify. Unfortunately, these fakes not only cause trouble to their partners, family, or alleged “foes” by posting their private info but participating in questionable schemes.

Beware of the inviting advertisements or requests to send money ahead to gain access/discounts/tickets or other potential benefits from talking to the unfamiliar accounts or users claiming to know you. Besides, keep in mind that celebrities have verification marks on their profiles so you will fairly receive any messages from them requesting from you to do something. 

Conclusively, that is how you can build your protection with these three steps from the hackers willing to share this information with you.

Question your security today and mark out the potential vulnerabilities in them avoiding possible problematic situations online. Keep your antivirus updated and your system manually checked. Use in-built Windows features to avoid “holes” in your security system.

Lastly, behave like a pro hacker and show little to no trust to the people you accidentally meet online. In the end, your safety is in your own hands and you have all the options to make it possible.