3 technology New Year’s resolutions

People of the western world have been making resolutions for the new year for over 4,000 years. The Babylonians, along with the Romans who later developed the idea further, made resolutions in the hope of favourable returns from the gods.

In the current day, self-interest has become disintermediated from others and we now make resolutions that are largely about self-control and self-improvement, with the occasional thought given to being a nicer person to others.

Although there seems to be some evidence that making resolutions for a new year works better than doing it at another time, Harvard psychologist Associate Professor Amy Cuddy points out how bad we are at setting effective and achievable goals. And then of course, even when we do make resolutions, most of us give those up very quickly.

A different approach however is to use the new year to undertake specific one-off tasks that at worst will have a lasting benefit and at best may initiate better behaviours.

Amongst the resolutions people make at New Year, technologically-based ones would normally not be at the top of many people’s lists. This is possibly surprising given the central role that technology plays in our lives and the potentially immediate and devastating effect the failure of even personal technology can have. From the simple losing of information through failure to keep backups through to loss of our entire identity through its theft and subsequent misuse, problems that could be simply avoided can have major consequences. That is not to say that losing weight and exercising more is not important, but having good “technological hygiene” practices are important.

So here are 3 things that all of us should be doing in the New Year.

[1] Tidy up and renew your passwords

Hundreds of millions of passwords are stolen every year. These are mainly stolen from hacked websites or from trojans on a compromised user machine. Having an account compromised is bad enough but the problem is magnified if the stolen password is the same one that is used for all of the user’s other accounts.

Even if you are using different passwords for different accounts, it is a good idea to change them periodically. When you do, you can take the opportunity to follow a few best practices and even start using a password manager.

Briefly, the rules of good passwords are:

1. Use a combination of words, numbers, symbols, and both upper-case and lower-case letters. For example “ThzM1teB*gud”
2. Make the password at least 8 to 10 characters long, but the longer the better. Remember that if you have password software to remember it for you, you can make the password as long as the site accepts.
3. Avoid using common words as part of the password

One suggestion that combines changing passwords with other resolutions you may make for New Year, is to set your password to something that will remind you of the resolutions you have made, like “Bn1ce2people”.

[2] Unclutter your digital life.

Dealing with email and general information overload may be a feature of life these days, but a lot can be done by unsubscribing from unnecessary notifications and even entire services. Unsubscribing to third party emails is usually just a question of clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email. For notification emails from social networks like Facebook and Twitter, it is “easier” to configure your email notifications in the settings.

For Twitter, you can switch off all email notifications at https://twitter.com/settings/notifications:

For Facebook, you can control most email notifications by going to https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=notifications&section=through_email&view:

[3] Lock down your digital world.

This is the time to make sure that your mobile devices and computers are up-to-date with the latest software and that you have antivirus software installed on your PC or Mac. Often forgotten is the software that runs on wireless routers and modems which is notoriously vulnerable to attacks and compromise. Apple’s products are relatively easy to update using the AirPort Utility but other manufacturers have their own interfaces.

The most common problem with security however is one that is “between chair and keyboard” i.e. people themselves. This is especially true when it comes to clicking on links in emails that download unwanted software or take you to fake sites that attempt to steal usernames and passwords. It is always worth checking links before clicking to see if they are legitimate. For example, an email (see below) that says it is from Telstra (or any other legitimate company), will not have links that start with http://dpalbums.lv – in Telstra’s case, it would have telstra.com.au or telstra.com

There is a number of other tech resolutions you could make in addition to these: recycling old technology, making sure your devices and computers are backed up and even just taking regular time outs from using technology. Whatever you end up doing though, they will set you up for the rest of the year and hopefully keep you calmer and safer.

This article is published in collaboration with The Conversation. Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum. 

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Author: David Glance is Director of UWA Centre for Software Practice at University of Western Australia

Image: A generic picture of a person using a computer mouse. REUTERS