3 essential techniques to protect your online privacy

The Web is a wild place, with more than the National Security Agency potentially out to get you. With the so-called six strikes antipiracy initiative in full effect, you never know if Hollywood is monitoring your peer-to-peer activity. Then there are the malicious hackers trying to reset e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter passwords. No security regimen short of complete hermitage can keep you 100 percent secure. Nevertheless, you can take a few simple precautions to maintain your privacy online and deter all but the most determined bad guys.

1. Secure the line: One of the worst online security mistakes you can make is to connect to an email, bank, or other sensitive account over public Wi-Fi. Use VPN instead.
2. Stop leaving private data in the cloud: You can build one yourself by encrypting data on your PC before sending it to Dropbox, using free software such as BoxCryptor or the open-source TrueCrypt. A far simpler method, though, is to find a file-syncing service that offers built-in storage encryption.
3. Secure your online services with two-factor authentication: requires you to enter a short numeric code in addition to your password before you can gain access to your account. The code usually comes from a physical fob or from a smartphone application. The good news is that you can get most of your two-factor authentication codes from Google's Authenticator app for Android and iOS.