| Shameless plug: I cohost a podcast about personal digital security, with a target audience of people who aren't (necessarily) in tech but are interested in understanding things and not just getting a pre-canned set of recommendations like "Use a Chromebook" (or "Use Signal use Tor"). https://looseleafsecurity.com Some specific advice I'd give with relevant episodes: - Use a password manager https://looseleafsecurity.com/episodes/securing-your-online-... so you can use strong, unique passwords, and and set up two-factor auth wherever possible (preferably with a security key) https://looseleafsecurity.com/episodes/two-factor-authentica... so that you're protected from the many possible attacks on passwords. - Get an unwanted content blocker (aka ad blocker) like uBlock Origin to protect you against malicious ads, popups, etc., and/or a cross-site content blocker like Privacy Badger to protect you from being tracked across websites and also protect you against malicious embedded content. https://looseleafsecurity.com/episodes/web-security-continue... - Set up backups, because it's the only reliable defense against ransomware, and it's the best defense against your computer getting malware - it's easier to wipe and start over than to try to pick out the malware (especially if their child isn't around!). https://looseleafsecurity.com/episodes/backups.html - Learn about how to protect yourself from malware. It's not clear today that antivirus or similar software has enough benefit, and they often introduce their own security issues (or just slow down the computer enough that you'll want to turn it off). But your OS has various built-in knobs about running unknown software, and you're probably better served by turning those up to the safest settings and knowing what its security prompts mean. https://looseleafsecurity.com/episodes/malware-antivirus-and... (In particular, if you're not in tech, it's not obvious that every program you download has access to all your cookies and private files ... unless you get it from your OS's app store ... unless ... we talk about this complexity in this and previous episodes.) We post both the entire transcript and additional notes / links to further reading, so if listening to people talk isn't your preferred way of consuming content (and honestly it's not mine either!) our website should still be pretty useful. |
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