7 Essential Tips For Keeping Your Email Safe And Secure
If you are looking for ways to increase the security of your emails because you’ve become a freelancer, or just work for a company that runs online, then look no further. Here are 7 tips essential to keeping the security of your emails top-notch.
As more and more jobs start to become online or through emails and the web, the security, and safety of emails and messages that may hold sensitive information have become the top priority for many people and workplaces.
If you are looking for ways to increase the security of your emails because you’ve become a freelancer, or just work for a company that runs online, then look no further. Here are 7 tips essential to keeping the security of your emails top-notch.
Limit The Amount Of Info You Share
Often when responding or sending an email you are listing a lot of information out, who you are, what you do, where you work, where your emails come from, and in some cases, your location can even be tracked via your IP address. This means that while you may be outputting a simple answer to a question, or asking for some assistance from a friend or co-worker, you are also putting out some other information that can be tracked.
The best way to prevent this would be to limit what information you send, and who you send it to. You want to share the least amount of personal information, as the more information you share the more likely people with malicious intentions would be able to hack your information and your accounts to get into your other emails.
Be Careful Which Emails You Open
You’re checking your emails and then you notice you have an email from an anonymous source that you never received one from before, nor did you request one from. Would you open it? While it may be some important email sent from your boss or someone else through a private email rather than a public work one, it would be better if you didn’t open it.
Emails that come from private addresses or anonymous addresses are most likely to be laced with danger. They can have malicious information or pop-ups on them that can trigger after you open them or click on a link, resulting in a pathway for others to get into your email and information.
Stay Away From The Spam Folder
This one should be a no-brainer. While some emails can be accidentally sent into your spam folder without you even listing it as spam, most files that get sent there are just that. Spam emails that serve no real benefit to you or purpose but to get you to click their links, download their files, and get malicious software onto your computer without you knowing.
The best thing to do? Just stay away from the spam folder. Don’t go into the spam folder unless you know you were expecting an email and it just may have been sent there. And if you must go into it, make sure you’re clicking the right email before you open any files or links.
Make A Strong Password
The best way to defend your information and emails before getting anti-virus software would be to ensure your password is strong, unique, and can’t be easily guessed just by gathering information about you.
While most sites and emails are now requiring you to follow their basic protocols to make strong passwords that would increase security, you should do your best to exceed these expectations and make a password that only you would know, that you don’t share, and ensure no one would be able to guess.
Invest In Anti-Virus Software
The second line of defense, which kinda counts as both a first and second, would be anti-virus software. This software can prevent you from opening content that has malicious activity on it by scanning it before you open any email or link.
Secondly, if you somehow do open a link that gets your computer infected or gets a virus put out to steal your information, the anti-virus software will start working right away to fight and delete this bug from your computer. Thus doing two jobs at once to defend your computer.
Be Wary with WiFi Connections
So you’re going out to a coffee house and bringing your laptop so you can relax and do some work with their free WiFi, but you notice their WiFi is down, and in turn, there is another unlocked free connection you can make. While in your head this may seem like a great idea… it’s not.
Sure free WiFi sounds great! But if it’s not trusted or you don’t know who is hosting the hot spot, it could be a person with the intent to have people connect and then they steal fragments of data from your emails or files eventually being able to just get into your information freely from their own home.
If you regularly work outside of your home, your might want to consider getting a VPN in order to add an extra level of protection to your connection and data.
Try Encrypting Emails Or Messages
If you are worried about someone intercepting your emails or files when they’re en route to their next destination or worried that someone may open them from a stolen email, you may want to look into encrypting your emails and messages.
Encryption is a not so simple process that adds extra security to emails or files that can be sent. This encryption ensures that not just anyone can open a file, but it has to be someone with the ability to decrypt them properly with the same know-how or software in the first place.
While it may seem out of the way as an extra step if you have sensitive information you would always want to keep it safe.
Keeping Your Info And Messages Safe
Security of your sensitive information that can be sent through emails is a top priority for any person, regardless of if it’s work information that is required to stay private or if it’s your personal account information for banks, loans, or your investments. Regardless of what it is, you want it all to remain safe and not be found by others with malicious intent.
Remember these key steps to ensure you keep your emails and information safe on the web. Create a strong password that no one would be able to understand just by knowing a bit about you, invest in a great anti-virus software that will stop threats before they happen and capture them in case they get into your computer, and don’t trust any random WiFi connection when out in public.