Internet Safety Expert Offers Tips To Stay Safe While On The Web

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Protecting yourself while online is importan, and it's relatively easy to do, according to Daniel Sieberg with Google.

"I mean an umbrella protects you from the rain, and creating a more secure online presence is something you can also do," Sieberg said.

Sieberg said the most common mistake people make is using the same password for all your accounts.

"It's a little like using the same key for all of your doors," he said.

He said you should create different passwords for each account and make them unique. One way to remember them, he said, is to use a phrase and use the first letter in each word of the sentence.

Or you can create a "two-step" authentication process.

"So, when you're logging into your account, you're not only putting in that really strong password, you're also putting in a randomly generated six digit code that you get from an app on your phone," he said.

Sieberg said that makes it harder for hackers to get to your information.

Another thing is to watch out for suspicious emails, which may look real but are really just efforts from "hackers" to steal your personal information.

"If they send out millions of these emails, and even if they get 1 percent, they still get a lot of information," he said.

He called it a "cat and mouse" game, where the bad guys are always coming up with clever stories to try to get valuable information.