Blogs

Computer safety: You, Your Stuff, Your Computer
Part three of four

Securing You, Your Stuff, and Your Computer involves a lot of overlap. Securing a wireless router protects the Computer as well as Your Stuff. Using common sense in online social situations protects You, Your Stuff and Your Computer.

The best thing that can be done to protect a user's data is to BACK IT UP to a separate drive/disk/device that remains separate from the computer when not actively backing up. The biggest destroyers of data are malicious software, acts of God (weather, fire), and failure of the storage device. Backing up all data to an external drive and leaving that drive connected to the computer doesn't protect Your Stuff from malware or acts of God. Back it up and put the backup somewhere else - preferably outside the home. Online backup services will do this for you, for a monthly fee. Unless you have very fast Internet or only a little data, these services are most useful in the case of catastrophe (Biblical flood, plague, massive hurricane), because both backing up and recovering the data only goes as fast as one's Internet connection. Regardless, back the data up. Just copying it to DVDs or CDs is lots better than nothing at all. Data recovery can be very expensive, so make backing up as routine as brushing teeth. Don't be like the client who didn't back up his one-of-a-kind digital recording of a now-deceased war hero and had to pay a California data recovery company $1,100 to get one file back.

If your computer came with disks to reinstall the OS and the programs and drivers that came with it, keep them where you can find them. If you have bought new software, keep the disks. If it was downloaded software, burn the installer and a copy of the serial number on a CD or DVD and keep with your other disks. If your computer didn't come with a set of disks, you can still use the Recovery partition to create a set of restore disks. The procedure is a little different with each computer brand, but the instructions will be on the company web site, in the support section, usually as part of the downloadable manual for your model computer.

If at all possible, do not use Internet Explorer. I could say some versions are better than others, but simplicity is best. Don't use IE. Use Firefox, Safari, Chrome. They are all free and work great.

John Corbin has been repairing, installing, maintaining and building computers since 1996. He is President of Switch Digital Lifestyle, serving the Wiregrass area's I.T. community (Windows, Mac OS, and others) since 2002. He is an Apple Certified Technical Coordinator.

"I didn't start using computers as a programmer or electronics engineer. I started as an ordinary user. I make it my business to help computer users like me do extraordinary things by treating them the way I would like to be treated."

John can be reached at 334-449-0115 (text, cell) and johncorbin@me.com for email.  His website is http://switchdl.com