Account Security (2FA / MFA / Backup Codes / E-mail recovery)

The reason you want to enable 2FA is to prevent to let some stranger or hacker access your account, when they've retrieved or guessed your password.

What you should do is put an extra layer of protection so you can prevent this, and that you're certain, only you can access your account and nobody else, by the means of:

• sms (not to be used when you're an high level target)
• code
• backupcode
• backup emailadres
• hardwarekey

To enable 2FA for the most common website, read on for the link 2fa tutorial.

Hackers or people with bad intentions do this via:

• Phishing mails
• Wachting over your shoulder
• Gain access via an unpatched computer
• Reading your password.txt / Excel file
• Guessing your password > Brute Force Dictionary Attack.
• Look in a Database if your current password is the same of the hacked account. This does not mean you were victim then, but re-using old credentials can get you in trouble.

I'll be providing some options and where to find them.

Want to know more?

Passwords

There are various way's to retrieve passwords. Here are some of them to recognize the methods and to check against.

• Retrieving passwords (paying attention to links in various messages)
• Unique passwords (not re-using them)
• Check against a Database of Hacked Cloud Services, to see if you account is listed.

Password managers

So, what's up with password managers?

They provide you a safe with passwords to be filled by you, where you can generate unique passwords for every cloud service you use. Strong advice is: do not re-use passwords. Keep them unique. When you do so, it's pretty hard if not impossible for a hacker to gain access to your cloud services. Consider this: LinkedIn was hacked in 2012. If you still use that password, you could fall victim to being hacked for the account you still use it on. People want convenience, so they re-use all the time. It's human nature. But the future is here, so we need to protect ourselfs, and make our lifes easier. Password managers can help you with that. You might think, that won't happen to me, but if you'd only follow the internet news, 2018 was the year of the hacks all together. Never have there been some much data breaches, and this will continue in the future.

• Online
  • Lastpass
  • Onepassword
  • Dashlane
• Offline
  • Keepass

Getting interested?

DNS adjustments for privacy or protection.
(for every device on your network or individually)

Smart users, can adjust their DNS-Server in their Router. One place, all covered. But it requires some technical knowledge which is different for different vendors. The basics are the same.

Basically: you login into your router, go to settings / dhcp / dns and adjust the valures of the IP Address, which contains of 4 octets: XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX (this can be 3, 2 of 1 digits per octet).

What do you seek really? Want to be protected against attacks? Or is it privacy you seek?

or

Do you just want to set it to something else because you're on the road or somewhere public?

Curios?

In this article I'll be giving you advice for Antivirus or rather Endpoint Protection (this includes a Firewall) for:

• Windows
• OSX
• Android
• en Linux

Addtionally I'll provide you links to set this up from your internet provider (dutch, but check yours)

An old but usefull anti-ransomware tool (free)
It would be wise to pay for a professional product where you have it all, from Antivirus to Firewall and Anti-Ransomware included.

Antivirus or Endpoint Protection is a nescecary evil which you must certainly consider wisely to invest in.
Files which get lost, because of virusses or ransomware are very hard to get back unless you have a back-up of your files. Most people don't even know about that.

With this article I'll be providing download links of Avast - Sophos - ESET and for your internetprovider.

Mail settings for your provider

If you are not using the app provided, for your provider, or there is'nt any, then it's good to be aware, that in the past, old methods were recommended. Time for an upgrade don't you think? This can be tricky, because of one selection, it will not work anymore. Or the use of a port that is not supported. From that point of view, people were switching back pretty quickly or had no idea. elijke instellingen.

Some common ports to be advised and some tutorials from the following providers.

• Microsoft
• Google
• Apple

to securely setup your e-mail account.

Interested?