Tech Hygiene: 10 Bad Habits To Break
When it comes to digital devices, a little cleanliness – both inside and out – goes a long way.
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Keepin' it clean
Many of us take care of our digital devices -- smartphones, tablets, and PCs -- the way we take care of our bodies, and that's not always a good thing. Like that gym membership, the daily backup utility goes unused. We scarf down burgers and donuts (or your junk food of choice) just as we load up our PCs with performance-crushing bloatware.
And when your physical and digital worlds collide, bad things can happen. If you don't regularly wash your hands, for instance, you'll likely spread harmful bacteria to your devices. You may get sick more often, as may friends, family, and colleagues who have the misfortune of using your germ-laden phone, tablet, keyboard, mouse, or trackpad.
Maybe your digital life needs a hygienic overhaul.
For the purposes of this article, "hygiene" refers to the proper care of your PCs and mobile devices. This maintenance can be as simple as wiping down your smartphone every now and again with an antibacterial wipe. Some tips may require a bit more effort, such as disabling startup programs that slow Windows PC boot times to a crawl.
There's always an "ick" factor associated with the word "hygiene." Why? Who knows? Perhaps the word conjures up unpleasant memories of dental cleanings, filthy public toilets, or educational videos on the onset of puberty.
Most of our hygiene tips are targeted at consumers rather than business users, as the latter group is generally more disciplined when it comes to hygienic tech practices, such as keeping desktop PCs clean of fan-clogging dirt, hair, and dust.
Then again, workers in the enterprise are often guilty of hygienic gaffes such as spilling lattes and muffin crumbs all over their laptops and desktop keyboards. Or they may mistreat their work-issue devices, leaving a business laptop or tablet in a hot car on a blistering summer day, for example.
Small businesses engage in poor tech hygiene, too. You might think that all SMBs diligently back up data -- the lifeblood of their operation -- but that's not always true. Online backup provider Carbonite's "2014 Report on the State of Data Backup for SMBs," a survey of 500 IT professionals from US companies with fewer than 100 employees, provided some surprising revelations.
For instance, just a third (32%) of respondents said they had completed a backup that day. Roughly half of respondents had backed up all of their business files within the past week, and 15% said their most recent backup was "up to a month old" -- a whole month!
Do you need to polish up your tech hygiene skills? Read on to find out.
Not everyone is great at organizing their stuff. It can be challenging (or boring) to efficiently arrange all of the documents, photos, and other files you accumulate over time. But whatever you do, Windows user, don't save your files to the desktop -- that's the tech equivalent of tossing your clothes on the floor. What's the big deal? Well, file backup utilities often don't back up the desktop by default, and a desktop that's littered with file and program icons can be difficult to organize. It's wiser to keep files off the desktop and in folders such as Pictures, Music, and Documents. If you want desktop access to a particular file, right-click on the file in question, and select "Send to" and "Desktop (create shortcut)" from the drop-down menu. A link to the file will appear on the desktop, but the file itself will stay tucked away in a separate folder.
Nobody likes to install software updates -- they always seem to demand our attention at the wrong time (which is always). Update messages are easy to ignore, but doing so is a big mistake. Cyber criminals love to exploit vulnerable apps, of course, particularly Oracle Java. Security vendor Kaspersky reports that in 2013 more than 90% of attempts to exploit vulnerabilities that it detected targeted Java. Windows components, Adobe Acrobat Reader and Flash Player, Android, and Internet Explorer are popular targets as well, though on a much smaller scale.
One caveat: Security researchers recently warned of a shady group known as "DarkHotel" that targets WiFi users in upscale hotels. The attackers send hotel guests bogus pop-up alerts to download Adobe software updates. But those who do so get a dose of malware instead, Wired reports. The solution: When you're away from a trusted network, manually download updates and new versions from the official Adobe Acrobat website. (The same advice applies to update messages from other vendors, too.)
Drinking water, coffee, tea, bourbon, or just about any liquid next to your laptop or desktop is asking for trouble. Your laptop is not a lunch tray, either. As explained by this Geek Squad blog, liquid is a top-notch conductor that can short-circuit a keyboard; on a laptop, liquid can seep down into critical components, damaging the PC's processor, memory, and even the motherboard. Solid food is less risky, of course, but crumbs and other morsels can cause keys to stick and stop working correctly. Besides, keys and touchpads get awfully greasy after too many lunches with your laptop.
(Images: akhbarona.com and bbc.com)
If bad guys steal one or more of your passwords, they can cause all kind of devilry: resetting passwords for your other accounts (including really important stuff like banking); snooping through your contacts and sensitive emails; and, as many celebs recently learned, posting your private photos online. Two-step verification is the easiest way to prevent such calamities. Here's how it typically works: When signing into an account, you enter your username and password as usual. The service then sends a code to your phone via text, voice call, or mobile app. Alternatively, you could plug in a USB security key as a second step, provided your device has a USB port and the service you're logging into supports this option.
Since the dawn of the PC era, tech gurus have admonished us time and time again to back up our data. Yet many of us still don't do it. In the era of online storage services like Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive, it's easy to save files directly to the cloud and forgo local backups. Online backup services like Carbonite and Mozy are options as well.
Of course, uploading a terabyte or two to the cloud isn't always practical, particularly for SMBs or home users stuck with poky upload speeds. Not only are local backups faster, but storage is dirt cheap these days: a 3 TB hard drive costs around $100 online. In short, there's no excuse for not making a copy (or two) of your digital stuff.
Face it: Filth loves PCs. The traditional desktop computer, with its cavernous design built for expansion, is an irresistible lure for dirt, dust, hair, and other airborne gunk drawn to cooling fans, heat sinks, and power supplies. Laptop and desktop keyboards are muck magnets, too. A proper spring cleaning every few months is essential to keeping your hardware running smoothly. You'll need these tools: a can of compressed air; a small handheld vacuum such as a Dustbuster; paper towels; an all-purpose cleaner; and a cotton swab with rubbing alcohol to clean the keyboard. To remove crumbs from the keyboard, pick it up, turn it upside down, and give it a good shake.
(Images: oocities.org and amazon.com)
Computing devices are dirty things. How dirty are they? Well, one 2011 study found that one in six mobile phones in Britain was contaminated with fecal matter, according to CNN. It seems people don't wash their hands as often as they claim, or perhaps they're fond of texting from the loo. Of course, shared devices such as tablets can quickly spread harmful bacteria from one user to another. One solution, beside washing your hands after doing your business, is to regularly clean your smartphone, tablet, and PC keyboard with antibacterial wipes. Or invest in sanitizing gear like the $60 PhoneSoap Charger, which is designed to clean and sanitize a phone while charging it.
(Image: PhoneSoap)
Computers slow down over time, of course, due to a variety of factors: all those resource-hogging apps you've downloaded over the years, diminishing hard disk space, insufficient RAM, malware, and so on. And while you can't keep your PC running as briskly as it did the day you bought it, you can perform some hygienic tasks to perk it up, such as clearing the browser cache and temporary Internet files regularly. It's also a good idea to disable unnecessary programs that load at startup. On the Windows 8.1 desktop, right-click the Windows logo in the lower-left corner, select "Task Manager" from the pop-up menu, and click the "Startup" tab to disable performance-crushing apps.
Computers slow down over time, of course, due to a variety of factors: all those resource-hogging apps you've downloaded over the years, diminishing hard disk space, insufficient RAM, malware, and so on. And while you can't keep your PC running as briskly as it did the day you bought it, you can perform some hygienic tasks to perk it up, such as clearing the browser cache and temporary Internet files regularly. It's also a good idea to disable unnecessary programs that load at startup. On the Windows 8.1 desktop, right-click the Windows logo in the lower-left corner, select "Task Manager" from the pop-up menu, and click the "Startup" tab to disable performance-crushing apps.
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