Ever since I began surfing the web my parents would ask me to be careful. Even more careful than crossing the street, or keeping my mouth shut so I would not be hit while in recess. Lame joke, i know but hey let’s add humor somewhere.

With every new advancement in technology, there comes dark sides, risk, threats, hackers, viruses, trojans, malwares, and the good ol’ human psychology scam trying to get something out of you. In my previous job at a TelCo. company we had extensive training about social engineering, cyber security, systems safety, and “you are the firewall” motto when it can to security. The reality of everything is that nowadays, trust me when I say this, hackers are not into creating viruses, trojans or malwares. They are looking to do phishing. Creating forms, emails, and convincing materials that trick people into providing any type of information, or allowing to install some application that tracks or allows a backdoor entrance to your patterns and behaviors, or even steals your data. Online Security nowadays needs to be taken as seriously as avoiding being attacked on the street.

Online Security nowadays needs to be taken as seriously as avoiding being attacked on the street.

Applications that keep you safe

These are a list of applications that will keep you safe on the browsing, avoiding scams, keep your passwords safe, add a second layer of security and even know your gramma is correct.

Brave Browser

Is the new internet browser for those of us who just want to access the internet, the data, the information as fast and secure as possible without it tracking your patterns, behaviors, and habits so it can be later be sold or you can be advertised to. For example, have you ever gone to a site to look for shoes, and then you go to your favorite social media platform and you start getting more and more ads about those shoes in particular. Then you go to a news site, and you also get a banner of the shoes. The same shoes. Guess what? You are being ad-targeted. The more you browse and keep cookies in the cache, the more chances you will be shown things that you search for at one point in time. Brave allows you to control natively if you will only connect to website that have an Encrypted connection and a SSL Certificate. In other words, HTTPS and not HTTP. It will allow you to stop Ads and Trackers. So you won’t be getting ads from search engines promoting stuff and trackers saying that you are from a certain city because of the IP address you get from your Internet Service Provider. Blocking scripts also allows for certain things on the webpage that might look great but actually slows down, burns resources and enable things that you may or may not care for but does allow the webmaster and the advertisers know of you habits. Spy much? Overall, Brave is a great tool for safety and enjoy browsing the internet, securely and faster than ever before. I mean, we have high speed but sometimes feels like it is 128kbps still, right? Brave solves that issue.

Last Password

Right after you install Brave and set it up as your default browser, yes I recommend it that much, the next thing I recommend is turning Last Password on and using it. Last Password allows you to manage your passwords in just one place, auto-fill the information correctly, and generate passwords. Social Media and Community Managers can truly benefit from this tool. Plus it is Free! you can even download it on your smartphone and use it as an extension when you want to log in into a webpage or app. I like the fact that you can select and create the password as simple or as difficult as needed. Wether you need the password to be easy, have all characters or simply be a hackable one, LastPass allows you to be on top of the game.

Cryptonite by Metacert Protocol

Wether you are into Crypto Currency, Blockchain, Trading, or simply browsing the internet, Metacert is the company that everyone should be rooting for right now. Surfing the web, specially social media and mainly Twitter this year, have become a cesspool for phishing scams where you have mysteriously won a contest, you can enter to win a prize, you have been selected to wear the Infinity Gauntlet…ok that last one is a bit off but you get the point. Scams are the new “be careful on the internet” that everyone is saying. As in, watch out what links you click, fors you fill, and what if that is not the real site, person, profile or the correct address. Metacert provides you with the best solution so you can now wether the webpage is 100% safe or if it is not a secure site. Because the principle of decentralization is the community, the actual users are the one reporting the bad URLs (addresses) to the Metacert team so they can verify and add it to the database and you can know for sure wether or not you are safe in that click or not. So how to add Cryptonite by Metacert. You must have Google Chrome installed on your desktop. Click here so you can install it. Is an extension that provides a shield icon on your status bar. Green is for verified domains, Black/Grey for non-crypto or unverified domains, Red for reported URLs. Here is a video demo:

https://youtu.be/KtEungFz3qo

If you have Brave Developer version you can add Cryptonite as well. Here is another video on how to download and add Cryptonite on Brave.

https://youtu.be/YO2o_ppO6Rs

Hope this post helps you gain more confidence. I will be sharing more information on apps and dapps that can help your experience be better. See you all in the blockchain!