Just like spring cleaning our homes, it's easy for our digital spaces to become cluttered, unorganized, and chaotic. Taking the time to clean up your digital spaces can help ensure that your information is safe and secure, and can improve the overall speed and performance of your digital devices.
Here's a few tips on how to reinvigorate your cyber life!
Update your Devices
Updating the apps and operating systems on your smartphone, computer, and tablet can reduce risks from malware and infections. Deleting unused apps can also free up valuable space on your devices.
Online Accounts Review
It's important to review your online accounts from time to time in order to delete any accounts that you no longer use and remove important information from these accounts such as saved credit cards, passwords, or old documents.
Web Browsers
Clearing out old, unused data such as passwords and old autofill information can help to tune up your web browser. Remember to delete any browsers that are not used and reset your browser cookies.
Put a lock on it
In today's day and age, everything is digital. It is crucial to put a lock on all devices to ensure the protection of your valuable information. Using a password, passcode, fingerprint, and/or facial recognition to log into your device is imperative. Turning on the multi-factor authentication or the two-step verification can also help to keep your information safe.
Always remember to take inventory of your passwords and ask yourself- are these strong enough? If not, then it's time to create a new password. Another important reminder is to use unique passwords for each account and consider using a password manager to store and protect your passwords for future use.
Back it up
We store everything digitally these days, so backing up your files and copying important data to a secure cloud site or external drive is a no-brainer. Always make sure to back up your files before disposing of a device and be sure you can restore the files from your backup for future use.
Old Files
Old digital files can take up space on your devices and clutter up your folders. From time to time it's good to purge your devices of old files including old emails, folders, and downloads. Remember to always empty the trash bin when you're done.
Unsubscribe
It seems like our email inboxes are always stuffed full of unwanted advertisements. Unsubscribing from the junk mail can help keep your inbox less cluttered. Also, be aware of phishing attempts made through emails as they can be very believable at times.
How do you spring clean digitally? Leave us a comment below!