5 Steps To Secure Your Email Address

While email is not designed to be completely secure, with a few workarounds one can enjoy added privacy and security to it. These are the five simple ways to keep your email address secure and maintain privacy.

Limit forwarding

To share a message to required users it is a common habit to forward the mail under consideration. There will be certain security measures to protect any sensitive information in the private email in case an email is hosted on a corporate server. While forwarding an internal email from the corporate server to a recipient outside of the company, that data like any other emails in the forwarded chain is completely exposed to unsecured, unencrypted servers. So before forwarding an email just think once of the consequences that might happen like where it is going, where it might be stored, who will see it. You can also schedule the time limit for the existence of the email.

Use a Strong Password and security question

Considering the fact that we tend to use easy password for our ease of memory that while setting up password for an account the company generally provides a password strength bar to keep us reminding how important it is to set a strong password. But in most cases that have not made people any wiser. When it comes to putting real effort into securing your email account, Google has always been the best considering it`s huge number of users. Best ways is to remember to make a password that only NSA can crack. Always use special characters (@, #, & etc.), numbers, upper case (A, B) and lower case (a, b) alphabets of almost any length preferably more than 6 characters long.

Security questions that has a direct link to your Facebook, twitter or any other social media post is one of the most meaningless measures taken by people to maintain privacy. Researchers say, security questions rank ahead of weak passwords on the list of weak privacy barriers to any account.

Two-factor authentication

Combining some information we know with the one we have is the basic working principle of the two factor authentication. For example the credit card; we have the card and we know the PIN assigned to it. Another example is the systems where we know have the personal details and we get the One Time Password, more commonly known as OTP. The main motto of the two step verification is to not completely rely on the password considering the fact that not all of us could come up with a strong password all the time. Gmail have taken care of this process by a simple two-step verification process using your mobile number to send OTPs. It is a similar process forWindows Mail system, also called Outlook as well. In your account go to “Password and security” and select “Set up two-step verification.” After this setup is completed, unless a hacker has managed to steal your phone and it`s password too, only with your mail password he is out of luck.

Do not use Public Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi on a coffee shop, unsecured Wi-Fi hotspot or neighbors` spilt Wi-Fi. DO NOT USE these to access any account or any short of transactions like through credit card or online money transfer. A hacker might be sitting nearby to sniff out your password and sensitive details right out of the thin air and you wouldn`t even know. Although without logging in you can casually browse the net and watch YouTube.

Protect your devices and login regularly

If somehow your device gets stolen, the one you use to access your accounts, you are completely exposed to the world of hackers. Who knows what might come next, may be empty bank account. Device theft is one of the leading reasons of data loss these days. Any types of spyware are also big concerns. To completely protect a data it is very necessary to take care of the physical security as well. Always set a password or a pin or any other security measures for the device. Also, do not click the links that looks suspicious, these might be meant for phishing, and always keep the official security patches through regular system or OS updates. Always log off and clear history if you are using any public computer. The hackers cannot immediately reset the password of any of your accounts only with the answer to your security question. For enhanced data protection, password reset with security question is possible only after 24 hours of your inactivity of your account after last using it. This clearly indicates that checking your mail regularly i.e. in a gap less than 24 hours significantly reduces the chance of getting hacked by exposing security question.

Enable HTTPS from your account settings will help from password form getting sniffed when out of thin air by hackers while using public Wi-Fi hot spots (only if urgently needed).