January 28th was Data Privacy Day and February 9th was Web Security Day. World Backup Day is still to come on March 31stprompting you to not be a fool on April fool's day. So what are these worldwide internet recognition days all about?
Data Privacy Day
Data Privacy Day is a worldwide reminder to respect the privacy of others while also securing your own. It's a subtle reminder that while you might want to check who you're sharing your Facebook photos with it's worth making sure your important documents are securely locked away and that you use different passwords for everything in the event of one of your accounts being compromised. A personal recommendation for having a million different passwords is to use LastPassor write them down and keep them safe. Do not save them in a file on your computer; it only takes one mishap for them to go elsewhere. BBC's TV show, Qi, once discussed that the safest way to look after your passwords is to write them on paper as it's less likely for someone to breaking into your house than your computer.
Safer Internet Day
Safer Internet Day should be every day. Don't let your bank or card details get into the hands of the wrong person. It might be overly cautious but I have a separate bank account for online usage, so in the event my numbers go wandering off without my permission, I don't have to worry as the account is nearly always empty and I can close it in minutes. This day isn't just promoting awareness of looking after your banks details but also to look after something more important; you. You as a person need to be safe and it is all our responsibilities to look after those around us, both older and younger. The older generation are easily inclined to give personal details away while the youngsters are likely to get caught in a trap. The things that criminals could get up to on the internet are unthinkable. Keep safe. If something looks too good to be true, it probably is. Keep everyone around you safe and buy a good, well known antivirus. My personal recommendation would be Avira for Windows and Sophos for Mac.
World Backup Day
To quote World Backup Day's website, it's a "day for people to learn about the increasing role of data in our lives and the importance of regular backups". I couldn't have worded it better myself. Let me tell you a little story of something that happened to me a while ago. I had a computer with a few different hard drives inside it and some were in a RAID 0 array for speed and size benefits. Stupidly I didn't have a backup but I was ignorant and unaware of how important one would be. I had all my old school work (which I didn't really care for), years' worth of web design, all my music and films all in one place; it's safe right? Wrong! I made one small change to my computer and lost everything. With a RAID 0 array, if you make one slip up, it's all gone and for good! I was gutted and angry, but I was young and maybe I should have known better. From that day I made backups. Firstly I got an external drive to back up to. Then I built my first server so I could access my backed up data remotely. A few years and many hard drives later I've got a server with 4 drives in RAID 10 (so a drive can fail and all data will still be intact) keeping a backup of my desktop and laptop. Plus it has the added benefit of allowing me to access all my data remotely such as watching films while out and about. A friend of mine uses two external hard drives. One locally for regular backups and one kept remotely should something terrible happen. I am convinced that backing up data is very important for both company and personal data. That's what inspired our error 404 page as a means to give a message along the lines of, "this file isn't found, make sure you don't lose yours".