Today, Tuesday, February 9th, is Safer Internet Day. I honestly didn’t realize that it was Safer Internet Day yet, until a friend of mine posted about Google giving us 2 extra GB of data in our Google Drive accounts. If you do a quick 2 minute security check of your Google Account, Google will reward you with extra storage space (which they normally charge for). There are, in fact, other things that you can do today, as well, for internet security. Here are three things that you can do right now, today, that will make the internet safer for you and for all of us.
First, go on over to your Google Account security checkup page here and review your account. Click on the various options and check to see that you have a backup phone number, and that you’re using two factor authentication on your account. Once you review all the details and confirm that they’re correct and okay, you’ll see an extra 2gb of space in your Google Drive account.
Secondly, be aware that if you use Gmail, Google will be starting to tell us if an email you’re about to send (or one you receive) is (or is not) going to be secure. You can learn more about this on their blog which they posted about earlier. Basically, Google wants us to start using encrypted email, and only send and receive emails that are secure. Many email providers don’t use encryption, so sending and receiving email could mean that others could be reading your email without your knowledge. If you don’t use Gmail, and you’re using email using your own domain name, check your email settings to see if you’re using encryption or not.
Thirdly, if you’re a website owner, then look to see if your site has been moved to HTTPs or not. If your site is not fully HTTPs (meaning that every page on your site is served up on HTTPs), then consider moving it over right away. If you use 301 Permanent Redirects, and you redirect from HTTP to HTTPs, then you won’t suffer any search engine ranking losses. I moved over a year ago and haven’t had an issues at all that I am aware of.
Even though today is Safer Internet Day, these three things may take some time to implement–especially the move to HTTPs. But, nonetheless, all of these will make the internet just a litter safer for all of us.