I don’t think I even though about internet security until I was a freshman in high school, I won’t get too much into it but there were random men easily over the age of 25 messaging me. At one point I freaked out but I didn’t know what to do so I blocked them and I took down all of my pictures and that was the end of that.
Well, so I thought unfortunately as I grew older and with my career, I knew I didn’t want people to find my personal pages. I took down my again after posting some in between this time frame, I changed my name on all social media and put all my account of private. Although this helps I still don’t feel safe, I stream for a living I am in front of a lot of people daily and worry about my protection, although I never use my real name or my address I know this doesn’t stop people.
My husband is constantly telling me I need a VPN, I’m not very good with all of the tech stuff, but from my understanding, your computer has a number unique to itself that can only be your computer like a fingerprint. You can leave these fingerprints on whatever sites you use, this can be used by hackers for knowing which computer to hack or people to know your location, either way, it is scary but isn’t something most people know about so it is uncommon to do. By using a program for other VPN’s you mask your fingerprint with others making people think you’re some computer from Spain.
So I go to download the software, and again I open another can of worms. As a cheap college student can’t afford an expensive mostly program like Nordvpn, so what you can’t pay for it google the free version! I goggled an app for it downloaded it and run into some problems. It wasn’t too bad I was quite lucky, my only issue is that Google services would run with it on or any other this creates a problem when I can’t stream. More importantly, many people download app’s like there and come to find out that the anti-virus software you downloaded is a virus, so it’s very important to check everything you download first.
This all being said I have a MacBook, although this doesn’t keep me completely safe I have never had an issue even as a teen who would click on thoughts links that your not supposed to. Although I don’t love all things apple and really don’t love the prices it is the best thing you can do for your security. Although not opening your junk mail is also a good way to not get viruses.
