Tag Archives: #saferinernetday

Celebrating Safer Internet Day: Five Key Ways to Stay Safe Online

Safer Internet Day is being celebrated around the world today! It’s an initiative that originated in the European Union two decades ago and is now observed in as many as 150 countries around the world. In Canada, we are focusing on these five key ways to stay safe online:

1. Set up a recovery phone number or email address, and keep it updated.
For many web services, your Google Account included, having a recovery method can help alert you if there’s suspicious activity on your account or if you need to block someone from using your account without permission. And of course, adding recovery information to your account can help you get back in more quickly if you ever lose access or can't sign in.

To set up recovery information, visit your Google Account’s Security section and scroll down to “Ways we can verify it's you.”

2. Use unique passwords for your accounts.
Create a unique password for each account to eliminate this risk. Make sure that each password is hard to guess and better yet, at least eight characters long. It can be hard to keep track of many different passwords—60 percent of people report having too many passwords to remember. To help, consider using a password manager (like the one built into your Chrome browser) to help you create, safeguard and keep track of all your passwords. Alternatively, you can even write your passwords down on a piece of paper (but keep it in a safe place!), since hijackers are most likely to be online, rather than physically near you.

3. Keep your software up to date.
To help protect your online activity, make sure you’re always running the latest version of software on all your devices.

If you’re using the below operating systems, here’s where you can look to learn how to check & update the software on your devices:
Windows support
Mac
Android
iOS


Some software, like Chrome, will automatically update so you never need to worry about doing it yourself. For other services that send notifications when it’s time to update, don’t click “remind me later”— take the time to install the update right away.
4. Go a step further by setting up two-factor authentication.

Setting up two-factor authentication (2FA)—also known as 2-Step Verification—significantly decreases the chance of someone gaining unauthorized access to your account.

2FA requires you to take a second step each time you sign in to your account on top of your username and password. Examples of second verification steps include: an SMS text message, a six-digit code generated by an app, a prompt that you receive on a trusted device or the use of a physical security key.

Set up two-factor authentication for your Google Account by visiting g.co/2sv and clicking “Get Started.”


5. Take the Google Security Checkup.

The Security Checkup gives you personalized and actionable security recommendations that help you strengthen the security of your Google Account, and it only takes two minutes to complete.

Taking the Security Checkup doesn’t just help make you safer while using Google. The Checkup also includes personalized tips to keep you safer across the web, like helping you set up a screen lock on your mobile phone and advising you to remove risky third-party sites and apps that have access to your account.

Find more online security tips like these by visiting our Safety Center; you can also visit your Google Account’s Security section to find all the settings and tools mentioned in this post.

Building a safer web, for everyone

Editor's Note: Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog.
Today is Safer Internet Day, a moment for technology companies, nonprofit organizations, security firms, and people around the world to focus on online safety, together. To mark the occasion, we’re rolling out new tools, and some useful reminders, to help protect you from online dangers of all stripes—phishing, malware, and other threats to your personal information.

1. Keeping security settings simple

The Security Checkup is a quick way to control the security settings for your Google Account. You can add a recovery phone number so we can help if you’re ever locked out of your account, strengthen your password settings, see which devices are connected to your account, and more. If you complete the Security Checkup by February 11, you’ll also get 2GB of extra Google Drive storage, which can be used across Google Drive, Gmail, and Photos.

Safer Internet Day is a great time to do it, but you can—and should!—take a Security Checkup on a regular basis. Start your Security Checkup by visiting My Account.
2. Informing Gmail users about potentially unsafe messages

If you and your Grandpa both use Gmail to exchange messages, your connections areencrypted and authenticated. That means no peering eyes can read those emails as they zoom across the web, and you can be confident that the message from your Grandpa in size 48 font (with no punctuation and a few misspellings) is really from him!

However, as our Safer Email Transparency Report explains, these things are not always true when Gmail interacts with other mail services. Today, we’re introducing changes in Gmail on the web to let people know when a received message was not encrypted, if you’re composing a message to a recipient whose email service doesn’t support TLS encryption, or when the sender’s domain couldn’t be authenticated.

Here’s the notice you’ll see in Gmail before you send a message to a service that doesn’t support TLS encryption. You’ll also see the broken lock icon if you receive a message that was sent without TLS encryption.


If you receive a message that can’t be authenticated, you’ll see a question mark where you might otherwise see a profile photo or logo:


3. Protecting you from bad apps

Dangerous apps that phish and steal your personal information, or hold your phone hostage and make you pay to unlock it, have no place on your smartphone—or any device, for that matter.

Google Play helps protect your Android device by rejecting bad apps that don’t comply with our Play policies. It also conducts more than 200 million daily security scans of devices, in tandem with our Safe Browsing system, for any signs of trouble. Last year, bad apps were installed on fewer than 0.13% of Android devices that install apps only from Google Play.

Learn more about these, and other Android security features — like app sandboxing,monthly security updates for Nexus and other devices, and our Security Rewards Program—in new research we’ve made public on our Android blog.

4. Busting bad advertising practices

Malicious advertising “botnets” try to send phony visitors to websites to make money from online ads. Botnets threaten the businesses of honest advertisers and publishers, and because they’re often made up of devices infected with malware, they put users in harm’s way too.

We've worked to keep botnets out of our ads systems, cutting them out of advertising revenue, and making it harder to make money from distributing malware and Unwanted Software. Now, as part of our effort to fight bad ads online, we’re reinforcing our existing botnet defenses by automatically filtering traffic from three of the top ad fraud botnets, comprising more than 500,000 infected user machines. Learn more about this update on the Doubleclick blog.

5. Moving the security conversation forward

Recent events—Edward Snowden’s disclosures, the Sony Hack, the current conversation around encryption, and more—have made online safety a truly mainstream issue. This is reflected both in news headlines, and popular culture: “Mr. Robot,” a TV series about hacking and cybersecurity, just won a Golden Globe for Best Drama, and @SecuriTay, a popular security commentator, is named after Taylor Swift.

But despite this shift, security remains a complex topic that lends itself to lively debates between experts...that are often unintelligible to just about everyone else. We need to simplify the way we talk about online security to enable everyone to understand its importance and participate in this conversation.

To that end, we’re teaming up with Medium to host a virtual roundtable about online security, present and future. Moderated by journalist and security researcher Kevin Poulsen, this project aims to present fresh perspectives about online security in a time when our attention is increasingly ruled by the devices we carry with us constantly. We hope you’ll tune in and check it out.

Online security and safety are being discussed more often, and with more urgency, than ever before. We hope you’ll take a few minutes today to learn how Google protects your data and how we can work toward a safer web, for everyone.

Posted by Gerhard Eschelbeck, VP, Security and Privacy