Be A Secure Computer User

4 min readMar 6, 2022

Make Yourself Secure In Basic Ways

“I must pay for using all of the software’s complete feature ? Well, why not looking for the cracked ones shall we ? Oh no ! What is this !? Why everything suddenly encrypted !?”

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/18/Wana_Decrypt0r_screenshot.png

This is the exact experience when someone’s computer got a ransomware. I have to tell you it is not a very pleasant experience. My friend did got a ransomware by trying to install a cracked (pirated version) of a software. The software itself isn’t offering any paid features, but my friend thought using a cracked software would give all of the features needed. It’s true to some extent, until the price for restoring all of your data become extremely valuable than getting pirated / cracked software. Is it worth the costs ? In my opinion, No.

Okie then, what should we do in order to get the software that we need ? The answer is simple, either you buy them or use other alternatives. Why ? Because you don’t want to get one of those nasty ransomware problems or any kind of hacks getting on your computer. Trust me, it’s better to sacrifice some of your money or use open source software if you like rather than the cracked ones. It might be hard getting out of this habit of getting pirated software, but you’ll get used to it. Personally, paying the developers means appreciation to the tools that they created.

Alright. That is one of my advice on be a secure computer user. However there’s more. There are a few things that you should know on how preventing the hacks of your personal, possibly even your professional life. These are just basics but quite effective.

Use a strong password but easily remembered. For example : canyoucrackthebox?, add numbers and special characters as well as upper case letter, it will be : C4nY0uCr4ckTh3[]?. If remembering all of your passwords seems difficult, consider using a password manager. Dashlane app is one good example for having a password manager.

Use any other login alternatives like biometrics if possible. Combining with strong password, your credentials would be very difficult to be cracked.
When using 2 Factor Authentication, never share any of the keys to anyone. 2 Factor Authentication are meant to be seen only by you.
Still talking about passwords. Never share them to anyone, even if it’s your best friend or colleagues. Never save your passwords somewhere not safe as well.
When receiving emails, always check the address of the sender. It’s necessary to compare the address with official address of either the company, organizations or the person. If there is an attachment, open it in a sandbox environment first before using it in the real machine. Check it regardless of the extension.
While using publicly available internet connection, always visit a website address that has HTTPS protocol, both the server and client encrypted. If there’s no HTTPS protocol, use a VPN.

Backup all of your important files. This has to be in top priority regarding to safely secure all of your data. Do backups in regular basis, but only important ones. For anything less important, backups can be done in non-regular times. Personally, I use external drives (e.g. hard drives, thumb drives, etc) but cloud storage can be used as well. However, don’t rely on cloud storage too much.
Lastly, if getting in technical things not to much of a problem, turning on firewalls on your operating system, close unnecessary connection ports and disable any kind of file or folder sharing that is not being used at the time can make the gap smaller for getting non authorized users.

I hope those basic things can get you one step further on not getting hacks. As for the closing, stay aware and stay disciplined.

Be A Secure Computer User

Written by Larry Dennis Lumban Toruan