Shockoe News - Summer

10. Use Temporary Credit Cards to Avoid Repeat Billing

9. Leave Your Home Address Off Your GPS Unit

8. Use a Fake Birthday for Web Signups

7. Change Your Gender for Less Annoying Ads

6. Use HTTPS Whenever Possible

HTTPS is a super easy way to stay safe on the net, and a lot of services will use it by default with a quick settings tweak. You can enable it on Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail by just ticking a checkbox. For everything else, there's the HTTPS Everywhere extension, which will use HTTPS on any site that allows it.

5. Use AdBlock, Even if You Don't Block Ads

You may have heard a lot about extensions like AdBlock Plus, but ignored them because you want to support the sites you visit (and we thank you for that). However, AdBlock extensions are great privacy tools, even if you aren't blocking ads. They can keep you protected from known malware spreaders, and even keep sites like Pandora from hijacking your Facebook login. All you need is a few simple filters in place to put another brick on the privacy wall.

4. Save Yourself from IM Distractions and Annoyances

There's nothing more annoying (or distracting) than getting an instant message from someone you don't want to talk to. Luckily, there are quite a few things you can do to keep your IMs more private, like only allowing your friends to message you, go invisible on a schedule, or only show your online status to the Facebook friends you actually like.

3. Use Disposable Email Addresses to Avoid Spam

One of the best ways to wipe out spam in your inbox is to use a disposable email address for the internet's sketchier sites. If you visit a site that requires an email address but that you don't fully trust, using a service like previously mentioned Trashmail or the simpler 10 Minute Mail, you can use a quick temporary email address to get the necessary "confirmation email" and ignore any future spam that might come your way.

2. Create Secure, Easy-to-Remember Passwords

While the most secure password is one you can't remember, there are a lot of tricks to creating easy, memorable passwords without making them easy to guess. We've shared many password-creation tricks before, likestoring your passwords in a dictionary, or making sure you use multi-word phrases for better protection. Even just adding a space or two to your passwords can make it much harder to break—just make sure you have a good system in place so you can easily remember them all.

1. Keep Your Security Questions as Private as Your Passwords

Strong passwords are important, but they're utterly useless if your "security question" is something anyone can answer. Instead of going the traditional security question route, you could use a formula to create a memorable, yet indecipherable security question, or even shift your hands on the keyboard. In addition, you could just use word association to make the question easy for you, but hard for others—e.g., "What's your mother's maiden name?" could be answered with your favorite Iron Maiden album instead.