Online accounts have become a standard part of modern life. Between work and personal accounts, it is easy to feel bombarded by passwords and logins. Studies conducted in early 2024 showed that, on average, most people have almost 100 online accounts.
Managing this many accounts, ensuring that they are all secure, and trying to remember the credentials for each is what nightmares are made of. Because of this, many get lax in their online account security and don’t practice proper safety.
Proper security, however, isn’t difficult. By following the easy steps below, your online security will experience a massive boost without much effort.
Deactivate or Delete Unused Accounts
One of the simplest ways to ensure your online accounts remain secure against cyberattacks is to disable them if you don’t use them. Many providers offer the option to temporarily disable or permanently delete accounts when you’re unlikely to access them.
Doing this not only ensures that nobody else can log into them, but it also protects your information. Typically, all information you may have stored on the account is deleted alongside it, making it impossible for somebody to extract your data.
Use Strong and Varied Passwords
While many companies and websites enforce a minimum password complexity standard, it is common for users to use a password they can easily remember, and that is associated with something they know. The issue with this is that these passwords can also be easily guessed if a hacker has gathered enough personal information about the person.
As such, it is essential to use passwords that don’t reflect anything identifiable like loved ones’ names, birthdays, or company names. The same password should also never be used for more than one account. Password managers can help with this, and the best options can even generate strong passwords when you need them.
Do Not Register Accounts Unnecessarily
Although many websites require you to register an account to access their full features, only register accounts on sites you plan to use regularly. If a feature is unavailable without an account, first check sites where you already have accounts to see if they have that feature available.
Doing this will limit the accounts you need to maintain and the passwords you need to remember. For example, if you want to play free casino games, rather than registering an account with an online casino, a quick search will reveal that there are 1000s of free slots to play for fun at casinos.com, which may not require an account registration.
Check What Websites Have Permissions
The ability to sign into websites using Google or other social accounts has made it much more convenient to access website content. However, this ease has led to many allowing websites to access their Google and other accounts and specific information stored within them.
This is often done on a one-time basis to avoid registering an account using an email. However, those permissions remain even after you’re done with whatever you needed the site for. Therefore, regularly review and revoke permissions granted to unused websites within your Google, Facebook, and Apple accounts.
Never Share Accounts
Although it may seem common sense never to share your account, many people share their credentials with others in their family, friend circle, and even workplace. Doing this exposes your private login information to others and means that your account is active on multiple devices that may not be as secure as your own.
To mitigate the risk this introduces, it is important never to share your account information with anyone, including the website with which you may hold the account. For things like streaming services, plans exist that allow for the sharing of a central account with multiple users—each with a unique login. It is better to utilize these instead.
Enable Alerts
While opting out of annoying emails generated from online accounts is common practice, specific email or text alerts should always be left enabled. Among these are sign-in notifications and failed authentication alerts.
Having these enabled means that you will be made aware each time one of your accounts is accessed or someone has tried to gain entry into it. This can give you time to secure your account by changing your password or forcing a sign-out on all devices.
Make Use of Two-Factor Authentication
Plenty of websites have made two-factor authentication (2FA) available to aid users in enhancing account security. This requires a second authentication, usually through an app or via text, even when the correct password is used to sign into an account.
Ensuring that this is enabled makes it significantly harder for hackers and criminals to access your account, even if your credentials are exposed in a data breach. It also serves to alert you when somebody other than yourself is trying to access your account.
Review Your Account Activity
In many instances, each thing you do while logged into an online account is logged by the website. This is true for social channels, accounts like Google, and most work accounts. This log can be accessed to review what actions have been performed while you were signed into your account.
Although it may be time-consuming in some instances, reviewing your account activity to ensure that you performed all your actions is an excellent way to see if somebody else has access to your profile. Should you see activities you know you didn’t perform, you can then secure your account or lodge a support query with the website.
Final Thoughts
Maintaining dozens of online accounts doesn’t have to be daunting. By following the above steps, you can easily ensure your information is safe, and you can continue benefiting from the accounts that matter to you most.
