We discussed 3 wrong ways of using your computer in our earlier post. Here are four more important topics.

Encryption of your data

This only applies to laptops in most cases, but one thing that a lot of people don’t do or do wrong is not to encrypt your computer. If you take your laptop to public places, where you want it to be encrypted. No one can access your data, if laptop is lost or stolen. There are a couple of ways, it can be done, if you have Pro version of Windows 10 or Windows 8. You can actually use BitLocker which is the most advanced encryption option. You can select to encrypt certain drives which you want to encrypt.

However, many people don’t realize there is another feature called encryption of device that is compatible with all versions of Windows, including Windows 10 at home. This device encryption function is more of a simplified version of BitLocker. It automatically encrypts all the drives of the computer. If you want to check if your computer supports the encryption function of this device, go to the Start menu and search for it. You may need to start this as an administrator to display and find a place where it says support for device encryption. And hopefully it meets the prerequisites; otherwise, if you don’t, it will tell you why you cannot have it. For example, there are some more requirements, like it could require an SSD or TPM chip.

Check windows startup

One thing a lot of people do wrong is let everything start with Windows without ever checking startup programs. And then wonder why the computer is slower than when they bought it. This is probably because a lot of things you installed, started with Windows. These were not there when you first bought the computer. To prevent these things from starting is very simple.

All you have to do is go to the task manager. Which you can open by pressing Alt+Ctrl+Delete. Then go to the start tab and this will show you all the programs that are starting with Windows. These programs could be slowing down your computer. It could even show you if it is able to measure how much startup impact each program has for that. You can see for things that have a high impact and are starting to use up a lot of resources. You can uncheck it if you know you don’t need it now. And uncheck everything that you know doesn’t need to start with Windows.

Using older version of OS

This is more relevant than ever because it has to do with using outdated or no longer supported versions of operating system. Windows for the most part and the reason being is that in early 2020, Windows 7, ran out of support. Windows 7 is one of the most popular operating systems of all time. Microsoft no longer offers security updates to Windows 7. This is why an old OS is more vulnerable. Hackers can take advantage of that and there is no way for it to be protected. Because it cannot update and repair itself, because there is no patch available for it. So, if you are using Windows 7 Vista or God forbid XP, definitely just update your version of Windows.

Reusing passwords again and again

This is something people do wrong no matter what kind of computer they have. Reusing passwords is one of the worst things you can do. Because, nowadays passwords are stolen all the time in jump databases that a passerby uses. Some websites steal the password database. Then what the hackers do is that they literally sell or buy these stolen databases. These same password combinations are then used to try to log in to other major sites. So you might think, well, this forum I signed up for was hacked and my password was stolen.

What they are going to do is check if that username and password are used in a bank account. So, if you use the same username and password or the same email and password on other accounts then you just need to change this practice. So, it is very important to use unique passwords on every website. What you can generally do is to have a standard base password type. You should use that is easy to remember and then you will come up with a way to modify that password based on the website. If your normal password changes in some way that you don’t necessarily have to remember every unique password. Because, you just have to remember the method used on every website. Hopefully, that makes sense. I could use something like an admin password like LastPass. And it will always be unique on each site.

To be continued….