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Article · Nov 16, 2022

'Tis the season for keeping our personal memories and information secure

Every year, more of us conduct our holiday shopping online. In fact, e-commerce sales worldwide are expected to reach $7 trillion by 2025. With more people shopping online, there’s a greater risk for falling victim to cybercriminals. That’s why it’s up to us to be extra diligent about our online activity. This means using strong passwords on our favorite holiday shopping sites, being aware of phishing attempts and backing up our important files and memories.

Spread joy, not your passwords

Almost every online transaction requires you to register for a site, or at least register as a guest user. This typically entails entering your email address and creating a password. Predicable passwords are problematic for several reasons. If your passwords follow the standard guidelines offered by most sites that require a single capital letter, at least 6-8 charters, numbers and one special character, hackers can easily make a series of attempts to try and gain access.

That’s why you need to establish password integrity. Passwords are the foundation of our digital lives. If they aren’t secure or effectively managed, we run the risk of falling victim to cybercriminals who are eager to access our personal information.  

The best way to prevent unauthorized access to your accounts is to create difficult passwords and to effectively manage them. While avoiding duplication of passwords for multiple accounts and enabling two-way authentication can help, using a password manager is another way to manage all of your account passwords seamlessly.

Don’t let holiday phishing scams reel you in

During the holidays, you can expect numerous follow-up communications from retailers and e-commerce sites where you’ve made holiday purchases. In many cases, you’ll be expecting these emails in your inbox, which means you’re more likely to open an email if it looks like it comes from a store you’ve visited or the banking institution you used to complete a transaction. Be mindful of these email communications by remembering these tips:

  • Do not provide personal information to any unsolicited requests for information
  • If you suspect you've received phishing bait, contact the company that is the subject of the email by phone to check that the message is legitimate
  • Don't open messages from unknown senders
  • Immediately delete messages you suspect to be spam

Keep your holiday memories merry and bright

Avoid losing those cheerful moments you captured all season long by investing in reliable personal backup. Make preserving your photos, videos, files and important documents part of your New Year’s resolution.

Our award-winning cloud-based backup solutions all feature unlimited storage, so you won’t have to comb through your files and photos to find the important ones. Each of our plans also include automatic file and photo backup as well as remote access, so you can show off your snapshots wherever you are.

Explore Carbonite Safe backup plans

Discover our plans and learn why millions of people trust us to keep their information secure.

Author

Kyle Machado

Kyle Machado is a writer at Carbonite + Webroot. He tells the story of the people and products that help keep our digital lives secure.

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