The average individual now spends an astounding twenty four hours a week online. That’s up by over nine hours since the year 2000 and accounts for one seventh of all of our time. But there are various reasons for this. Nowadays, most of our jobs entail some sort of online work – whether that’s sending emails, conducting research, providing customer support, or creating content for our small business or company’s websites. We also make much more use of the web for social reasons. While people may have previously phoned one another to maintain contact, we now generally make use of social media, messaging applications, and video call applications. We also tend to use the internet for self-education as well as procrastination. In short, whatever we feel like doing or need to do, the internet can probably provide us with the means to do it. However, it’s also important to bear in mind that the web isn’t always the safest place to operate. Thanks to people spending increasing amounts of time on it, it is both being used to hold increasing amounts of illegitimate content and criminals are using it as a new means to do wrong. So, to protect yourself, here are a few steps that you should take!

Keep Your Personal Information Secure

There are countless cases of people sharing too much information online, or inputting their personal details into unsecured sites which subsequently leak them. So, make sure that you only ever input the necessary personal information required to do what you want to do into verified and secure websites. You can conduct a search to find out if your information is being sold on the dark web if you are worried that info might have already been leaked. The dark web is an anonymous part of the web filled with illegal activity and your identity can be sold on the dark web without you knowing if you don’t conduct checks through specialist companies.

Use Web Filters

The web is host to all sorts of amazing things and information. But there are equal amounts of negative content out there. So, if you want to avoid being exposed to anything you’d rather not see, you can place filters on your web searches. These will remove and block any inappropriate web content, preventing it from loading on your screen. This is a particularly good move to make on professional devices, such as work laptops, tablets, or smartphone, as it can prevent inappropriate content automatically loading, which could cause you professional problems down the line.

These are just a couple of steps that you should take that will help you to remain safe and secure while browsing the web on any device. While the internet can be a truly wonderful place and resource, you do need to be careful when using it, as its positive capabilities are equally matched by its negative potential.