Protect your tech during Spring Break: Talking Tech podcast

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Hey there listeners, it's Brett Molina. Welcome back to Talking Tech. Everything seems to be opening up now, especially as we're seeing a lot of the restrictions related to the COVID pandemic lifting. As a result, there are a lot of people that are just itching to get away for spring break. And yes, I'm sure you're looking forward to it. It's going to be a fun time. Just finally get the opportunity to go on a road trip or go wherever it is you want to go and just kind of unwind and relax. And honestly, with the pandemic, keeping us at home, you maybe just want to get out of the house and get away from your house for a bit. But it's important to make sure to protect yourself and most importantly, protect your technology and your devices. My colleague Mark Saltzman writes about this in his story that you can read on tech.usatoday.com.

It's called taking a spring break trip? Here's how to protect your devices and identity on vacation. So we'll offer a couple of those tips here. First and foremost, update your apps. A lot of times, you will see hackers exploit vulnerabilities that are left there because people... The flaws in these apps have been updated, but you yourself haven't updated the app. So if it's been a while and you haven't, always go to check. Go to your App Store and Android, go to your apps and just check it, check for updates, double check, and make sure everything is all set. This one is important too, lock your phone. I feel like a lot of people at this point, have their phones locked. If you are among those that don't, make absolutely sure that there is some sort of way to lock your phone down, whether it's a passcode, whether you have face ID, whether you have touch ID, whatever it is, it might be, but just have something in place where your phone can be locked.

Because heaven forbid you lose your phone and then someone's got an open door right to everything you have. And again, a lot of times, a lot of the smartphone makers will require you to have a passcode if you're wanting to do certain things on your phone. But again, it never hurts. Just if you haven't done it yet, if you're in that position, make sure you've got some way to keep your phone locked. Passwords, just double check them, make sure everything looks okay. Use the two-factor authentication, that is so, so important. If you haven't done this yet with some of your accounts, do that, it's really helpful. It basically requires you to add in an extra code or if you're using something like an authenticator app, you can grab from that too.

But it's just a really nice way to keep everything super secure and make sure you're safe. If you are on vacation, there are always going to be the temptations, say you're at a hotel or wherever it is and there's a public computer there and you want to do stuff, like you maybe want to search something, Mark advises, hey, that's great for certain circumstances. So if you're wanting to look up something on news, if you're looking something on the weather, whatever it is, that's fine. If it's sensitive information, if it's financial, if it's anything like that, avoid it as best you can because that's the kind of stuff where you can do that, but that browser might remember your online activity, and then maybe someone sneaks in there and can get that information.

So just be really, really careful what you do online if say you're using a PC at a hotel business center, for example. Also good too, if you have your computer, if you're bringing a laptop with you, for example, and say you want to use it at a coffee shop, try using a VPN, which is a virtual private network. And basically what that does is that allows you to browse anonymously and you don't have to worry about people peeking in and seeing what you're browsing. You can read more Marks tips and learn more about how to protect yourself during spring break by visiting tech.usatoday.com.

Listeners, let's hear from you. You have any comments, questions, show ideas, any tech problems you want us to try to address? You can find me on Twitter @brettmolina23. Please don't forget to subscribe and rate us or leave a review on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, anywhere you get your podcasts. Don't forget you can get tech news delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe to the Talking Tech newsletter, it's available at newsletters.usatoday.com. You've been listening to Talking Tech, we'll be back tomorrow with another quick kit from the world of tech.