There is a breath of fresh air that we all experience when we deep clean our rooms or declutter a drawer. Well, the same goes for digital spring cleaning too!
Think about it this way: when there’s nothing lying around and taking up space, there will be nothing for scammers and thieves to use to your disadvantage. With digital spring cleaning, you can protect your privacy and data, create more storage space on your devices, and get rid of anything that is superfluous or dangerous.
There are many possible things that you need to take care of in your routine digital spring cleaning. They can be one-off accounts that you created on different sites or applications, free-trial memberships that have become useless, groups or forums that you no longer participate in, outdated files apps and documents, pictures, and so on – the list is endless. These may look like small inconveniences that seem easy to live with. However, when you put them together, they take up a lot of space and can even pose a security hazard to your data and devices.
How often should I spring clean? Realistically, you can only carry out your digital spring cleaning when you can clear out a solid day or two in your schedule to devote to it. Most people prefer to keep the weekend or one less-busy day in the week clear to devote the required attention that it needs. While this frequency may vary depending on the digital user and the number of devices in use, it is important that this spring cleaning is done regularly for all the reasons outlined.
Here is a checklist for your digital spring cleaning:
Review your accounts and delete the ones you don’t use.
The first thing to do is to go through all your browsers, one after the other. Look through your history, bookmarks, passwords, usernames, and accounts. For any account that you have not used in a while, log into it and remove all your data. Then, go on to deactivate the account.
This step ensures that your email addresses and contact information are not circulating in the online space unnecessarily, thus limiting your exposure to internet fraudsters.
Get organized, and safer too, with a password manager.
Go through all your passwords, making sure that they are each strong and unique. With the use of a good password manager, half of your work is done. Just make sure that you delete any unnecessary passwords for each account.
Delete any word document or sheet that has all your passwords written out. If not, you will give free access to all your accounts to anyone who can compromise it.
Read Also: Managing your passwords, the right, easy and secure way
Clean your PC to improve your performance
A major part of digital spring-cleaning deals with the software of your devices. But the hardware should never be left out for too long. Cleaning out your computers, laptops, phones, and other devices of yours will help it last longer and work better.
Update your operating system and apps
You will need to check to make sure that all your applications and the operating systems of your devices are installed with the latest updates. This step will go a long way to improve speed and functionality, as well as make sure that you can work safer online. It will save you time and resources to enable the automatic updates to feature on your devices as well. This also helps to fix loopholes and vulnerabilities present in existing or outdated operating systems and applications.
Delete old apps and the data associated with them
Once you have come this far, you will realize that there are some applications still installed on your device. This is the time to get rid of all of them that you no longer use. Remember, you have to delete all your personal data from each one of those applications first before deleting them. If you do not delete these accounts, they will still exist, leaving you as a possible victim of internet fraud or data breach.
Throwing away old computers and tech—dispose of properly
On the manual or at the back of every electronic device, we are advised to discard these devices properly. This is necessary to ensure your digital security and protect the environment. You can either trade in your device to the manufacturers, sell the non-volatile parts of the device, or give it out to someone who will make proper use of it. Do not make the mistake of throwing your devices into the bin. This can result in dumpster diving and attackers can take advantage of this
Spring cleaning always leaves you refreshed; how much more the digital spring cleaning of devices that you make use of for more than 70% of the day. With this checklist, your digital footprints will be secure, and your devices will work more effectively.
Information Science and Media Studies.
In her free time, she likes to teach and empower teenage girls to become the best version of
themselves.
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