HOW NOT TO GET HACKED

1. Be aware of what you share

You don’t have to delete your Facebook or Twitter account to stay safe, but posting birth dates, your mother’s maiden name or graduation dates—information typically used to answer security questions to access your accounts online or over the phone—on social-media sites makes a hacker’s job much easier.

2. Pick a strong password

It can take a hacker’s computer only ten minutes to guess a password made up of six lowercase letters. But you can create an early uncrackable password with at least nine characters using a combination of capital and small letters, symbols, and numbers. Using phrases for passwords works well too.

3. Use two-step verification

Facebook and Gmail have an optional security feature that, once activated, requires you to enter two passwords—your normal password plus a code that the companies text to your phone—to access your account. “The added step is a slight inconvenience that’s worth the trouble when the alternative can be getting hacked,” says CNET technology writer Matt Elliott. To set up the verification on Gmail, click on Account, then Security. On Facebook, login, click on the down icon next to Home, and then click on Account Settings, Security, and finally Login Approvals.

4. Use Wi-Fi hot spots with care

Large providers of free public wireless internet (the kind often available in coffee shops, airports, and hotels), don’t require encryption of data travelling between laptops and the internet, which means any information — your e-mail password, your bank account balance—is vulnerable to hackers. In Windows, right-click on the wireless icon in the task bar to turn it off. On a Mac, click the Wi-Fi icon to“off”in the menu bar.

5. Backup Your Data

Hackers can delete years’ worth of e-mails, photos, documents, and music from your computer in minutes.You can protect your digital files by using a simple backup system from websites such as crashplan.com and dropbox.com. Mac users are also able to store some of their movies, photos and music in iCloud, which can be retrieved if your Apple product is lost or damaged.