Guide about online safety

Don't run random files from the internet

Running random files from the Internet without running a scan on them could be your worst mistake.

Bad actors rely on this carelessness to infect your device with trojans that steal your login credentials from Discord, Spotify, everything from your browser, etc.

Instead, before running any random file, run a virus scan on it first. You can do this in Windows by using Windows defender or by uploading it to Virustotal.

Search for the original first

Before even downloading a file, you should first do some research as to, if the site you're downloading from is the actual original site.

This can be easily achieved by just searching for the program name on google and seeing what comes up.

Another way, is to look at the domain. If you're trying to download Google Chrome as an example, you don't download it from www.gooogle.com, but www.google.com.

It's often very subtle and easy to overlook, but doing this is crucial to ensure your own safety on the Internet.

Assume danger everywhere

This is the main concept behind Zero-Trust systems (i think), but in simple terms: Don't trust anything, until verified. Verifying if something is trustworthy can be done by following the section above.

This may be exhausting at first, but after some time it becomes second nature, just like breathing. You won't even notice it anymore at some point. So start being skeptical now, if you don't want a virus.

End notes

These are just some of the basic rules to follow.

TLDR;

Use common sense, dont blindly trust.

Verify.