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Tips for a dig­ital clean-up

It is not just our homes and offices which accu­mu­late plenty of clutter, but our devices, too. And such clutter not only takes up a lot of your device memory and affect its per­for­mance, but also involves risks. By just fol­lowing a few simple tips, you can tidy up all your dig­ital facil­i­ties and devices.

How to declutter your dig­ital life:

  • Clean up your device by get­ting rid of dig­ital clutter: Delete any apps and data you no longer need, and use soft­ware updates to bring your system, soft­ware and apps up to date.
  • Increase your dig­ital secu­rity: Use secure pass­words and pro­tect your access points and devices against unau­tho­rised access by strangers.
  • Check that your accounts and pri­vacy set­tings are secure.

Clean up your devices

Over time, a great number of apps, doc­u­ments, photos etc. accu­mu­lates on our devices such as PCs, smart­phones and tablets, but also in dig­ital repos­i­to­ries (for instance cloud storage loca­tions like Dropbox, iCloud, OneDrive or Google Drive). Such dig­ital clutter doesn’t just take up plenty of disk space on our devices, but also makes it more dif­fi­cult to find things. It also leaves our devices open to attack, so it is well worth having a reg­ular tidy-up.

How to declutter your devices: 

  • Delete apps and unin­stall soft­ware you no longer use. While you’re at it, make sure to also check your app access per­mis­sions, and limit them as much as possible.
  • Delete old photos, files and other data you no longer need.
  • Ensure all your devices are up-to-date, and run all poten­tial soft­ware updates.
  • Run a back-up for all your data, for instance using an external hard drive for this purpose.
  • Delete your browser his­tory in all browsers you use. Delete any book­marks you no longer need.
  • Declutter your dig­ital repos­i­to­ries: Arrange all your doc­u­ments in a suit­able file struc­ture, and tidy up your desktop.
  • Clear out your e-mail inbox: Delete any e-mails you have read, and unsub­scribe from any newslet­ters you no longer want or need.
  • Delete user accounts and pro­files you no longer use.

Increase your security

Pro­tect your online access points and your devices against unau­tho­rised third-party access. Use secure, com­plex pass­words to do so, and use dif­ferent pass­words in each case. You can use a pass­word man­ager to securely store all your passwords.

  • Check your pass­words: Are they secure (at least 12 char­ac­ters long, con­sisting of num­bers, upper and lower case let­ters as well as spe­cial char­ac­ters)? If not, set new, strong pass­words for all your access points.
  • Are you using a dif­ferent pass­word for all your online ser­vices? A pass­word man­ager can be helpful to manage your passwords.
  • Are your devices pro­tected against unau­tho­rised access? Make sure all your devices are pro­tected via a pass­word, code or face/fin­ger­print recog­ni­tion against third-party access.
  • Also check that your accounts are secure while doing so: Use the latest log-in pro­ce­dures, set­ting up two-factor authen­tifi­ca­tion where possible.
  • Check your pri­vacy set­tings in all your social media apps. Our instruc­tions for Face­bookTwitterInsta­gram and LinkedIn will help you with this process.
  • Check whether your online data have been affected by a data leak: Have I Been­Pwned.

What else would you like to learn about security when e-banking?

Reg­ister for a course now
and learn more:

Basic course

Find out about cur­rent Internet threats and some easy pro­tec­tive mea­sures, and how to securely use e-banking.

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Online course mobile banking/payments

Find out about mobile banking, mobile pay­ments and how to securely use these apps.

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Online course for the under-30s

Learn how to use your smart­phone securely. Next to basics, we will show you what you should know about social media, clouds, mobile banking and mobile payments.

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Course for SMEs

Is your organ­i­sa­tion suf­fi­ciently secure? Learn which mea­sures you can take to sig­nif­i­cantly strengthen your organisation’s IT security.

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