How To Clean Up Your Digital Life

Many of you be doing spring cleaning around the house but that should also involve your digital life as well.

Amie Mitchell with the Better Business Bureau joined News On 6 to talk about what you should do.

Reagan: So much of our lives are on our phones, laptops, or iPads. But it also makes us vulnerable.

Mitchell: It does, and you have to make sure your devices are secure. And that's going to be updating your software, do not delay, go ahead and update it. As soon as there's a new update is the way to keep you secure. And then your passwords, you really want to make sure your password is a little bit complicated, but you can still understand it. So a paraphrase of something you'd understand with letters and numbers, don't use your birthday, or children's birthday, or anything like that. But come up with a complicated enough password, but you know it and don't use the same password on every single social media site and all your devices. You want to change that up.

Reagan: We're also hearing about the two-factor authentication. I've seen that a lot more now. Is that something that you'd recommend?

Mitchell: You definitely want to enable it? Yes, there's one more step to double-check. But it's also one more step to keep you safe, and your device is safe. So go ahead and enable that two-factor authentication.

Reagan: What are some other tips you'd have if maybe someone's smartphone, for example? I know you mentioned apps on your phone that you don't use anymore. That's just taking your data.

Mitchell: Yeah, go ahead and take an evaluation of your phone and say, okay, am I not using these? Do I need to delete these accounts? Or just delete the app? Do I need to go in and clean up that account before I delete the account? So again, with like your social media, you kind of want to do a yearly evaluation on Hey, last year, did I share too much information? Do I want to make this picture not public? What information am I sharing on my page that maybe I want to lock down social media sites and change their algorithms all the time? So you want to do at least a once-a-year check on where you where you stand? What information are you sharing with them? And what information are you sharing with the public?

Reagan: What do you recommend for files? I mean, I think a lot of people, myself included, I am terrible at finding time to delete emails or consolidate files and my storage gets full. What do you recommend there?

Mitchell: So we recommend a three-to-one backup. So you back it up three times, you back it up in two different spots, and then you back it up once in a physically different physical location. So you are back once at home and maybe at work, but you have three different backups. So that way your device is you can access that in multiple different places, should one device fail?

Reagan: How important is it to be aware of things out there that it's going to try to lower you to like a quiz on Facebook to lower your information?

Mitchell: These seem these seem just you know, not a big deal. Okay, I'm going to answer these questions. What scammers are looking for in these quizzes on social media is going to be like a birthday, a phrase that maybe you've used on a security question like What was your pet's first name? Some of these things the bank asked for security questions. So you have to be careful how much of that information you're really giving online.

Reagan: Now identity theft, obviously is a big problem. We've talked about it with you before. You have an event coming up. What can you say about that?

Mitchell: We've got our annual or biannual secure your ID day it's going to be at Shredders Incorporated at 635 West 41st Street on April 27. From 1 to 3 p.m. you can bring two 30-gallon trash bags or boxes for free will shred those physical items right there on site. And then that's one less thing to worry about.