How to Protect the Data on Your Laptop

How to Protect the Data on Your Laptop

It's likely that your whole life is on your laptop: your financial records, your plans for the future, your entire photo and video library, your company's sales reports, and so on and so on. What you don't want is anyone else gaining unauthorized access to it, or more importantly, to all that data.


The good news is that both Windows and macOS make it easy to lock down your laptop and stop unwelcome visitors from getting into your files. The following steps are not difficult, and you should make sure you set aside time for them.


Keep Yourself Accountable


Make sure you have your own user account set up on your laptop, even if you're the only one who uses it—not only will this keep the kids from messing up your browser bookmarks when they want to play games, it'll also stop anyone else from accessing it. Even if your laptop gets stolen, if there's a password-protected user account on it, there's not much a thief can do beyond resetting it and wiping the data.

Microsoft and Apple know it's important, so you'll find it difficult to set up a new laptop without a user account, but avoid sharing accounts with other people or leaving them unprotected. You can manage user accounts from Accounts in Settings in Windows (via the cog icon on the Start menu), or from Users & Groups in System Preferences (under the Apple menu) on macOS.





Know the options for signing into your laptop and use them wisely.


Screenshot: Microsoft via David Nield

The usual rules about passwords and PINs apply here: Make sure you use a password or a code that no one else is ..

Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.