Staying Safe online and on Wattpad

Layer #7 ~ Some options for a safer computer

I did consider starting the book with this chapter but decided the reader needed to pick up the terminology and hopefully a bit of knowledge on the way, before I dropped some of this technical stuff. If we start at the paranoid end of internet privacy and security we should look at our computer setup first. Remember, when we are being this safe we are also behaving like the very people we are trying to avoid. Any safe haven in this world does not just protect the innocent, unfortunately. The safe surfer can be a hacker or an NSA agent, a saint or a sinner, or just an innocent little Wattpadder. He could use the following:

*A hardware firewall (good ones like Cisco cost about $3,000 - $4,000) and/or secure router

*A clean device (Macs preferred) with no crapware or with a new SSD (solid state hard drive)

*A reputable VPN that he pays for (from about $7 per month)

*An external OS like TAILS

*An app or trick to spoof/change his device ID

A good hardware firewall will deflect many kinds of cyber attack if not all. Most users don't even know one of the easiest ways to hack someone is through their wi-fi set-up, so hardware firewalls can really protect us and good router security is essential. True, some routers have inbuilt firewalls, but they also have a default factory setting and password that router manufacturers will advertise on their website. If unchanged, hackers who know these codes will be in, or opportunistic neighbours will be piggy-backing on our bandwidth. Hardware firewalls will stop that crap, but changing router factory settings, including the name of the router model is imperative too.

Routers

If we click our wi-fi internet icon at the bottom of our device's screen, we'll see a list of entries or, sometimes, brand names like AT&T or BTHub. This is a list of the other routed networks enabling and sending data from cells, tablets or computers in our vicinity. Commercial router brand names like Linksys or Netgear can be actually displayed on a wi-fi network; if we don't change that, other nearby users can see what brand router we're using and look up its default user name and password. Then they can hack us. Occasionally, we'll notice an entry like Bob'swi-fi or a term that isn't a brand name. Bob is smart, he's changed the name of his router brand to Bob's wi-fi and has probably changed the router's password too.

HAVE YOU?

We need to copy Bob and change our router model name, username and password to stop hackers using that model's codes. If you haven't changed your router details here's an advice page:

LINK 1 ~ Change your router password

SSDs

SSD (Solid StateDisk) hard drives are faster than a normal disk drive because of how data is added when we save stuff. The old style drive is a spinning disc and when we save, the data is plonked onto the surface in a random position before spinning off again. Each thing we save is put in different places on the drive, called sectors. Like, we'll be writing a story and paragraph 1 might be saved and stored in sector 1 of the disk while paragraph 2 ends up on sector 50032.

With a Solid State Disk everything is neatly ordered because data is stored on interconnected flash memory chips, making it a quicker system (boot-ups and file transfers can really whizz), though it's typically more expensive and contains less actual memory than an HDD. SSDs are not necessarily more secure, but we can buy a new one to replace the OEM hard drive in our laptop/desktop we bought from the store with its bloated crapware and advertising tracking IDs. A second-hand computer may still contain tracking tools and possible viruses, while people report being tracked or stalked by a second-hand computer's previous owner. It's worth considering buying a new clean SSD drive to prevent that, although we will have to install an operating system onto it too. Windows 7 is still the safest operating system with MS support, and easily available, while Mac drive data can also be transferred to an SSD. There are several ways to transfer a Mac OSX onto an SSD – many do it to speed up their machine – but I can't list them all here so I suggest to just put, install mac osx onto ssd or install apple onto ssd, into a safe search engine like DuckDuckGo.