It seems many people on here travel a lot and/or are in business and/or metropolitan areas. Understandably, then, there are lots of questions and suggestions about VPNs, browser extensions, email security, etc. I find myself intrigued by all of it and periodically jump into exploring options. Then, once I get mired in all those options and concerns, I remind myself that I am none of the above – do not travel a lot, am no longer in business, and live in a quiet very rural community of 10,000 at least 100 miles from anything resembling metropolis.
SO … what are the practical measures a user such as me should take? I do shop online a lot of necessity (even Home Depot is 2 hours away), and I bank online as well. I use 1Password, lengthy unique passwords, often but not always 2FA, and have weaned myself almost entirely away from gmail accounts (switched to Fastmail a few years ago). I turn off wi-fi connection on my Macs when I do not need to connect. I use Safari and Apple Mail. Have used Ghostery for years and added 1Blocker more recently. Search with StartPage or DuckDuck. Use Facebook only as a connection to internet Scrabble, with strictest privacy options enabled there. And use Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 on all devices. Our Fastmail accounts get virtually no spam.
Is all that enough? Do I need a VPN and/or other controls? I have never enabled any firewalls.
Perhaps more important (and probably more typical), my (extremely) less tech oriented partner, with iPad and iPhone but no Mac, has trouble remembering even simple passwords and thus reuses them frequently, and never 2FA. (This is a guy who refuses to learn how to use cruise control in his car.) I have his devices on Cloudflare 1.1.1.1, and I periodically make sure location services are turned off for virtually all apps except Tile and a few other important ones. He spends large portions of his day on YouTube. What is really scary is that he is lightyears ahead of other friends of ours who do not even passcode their phones.
Anyway, should I do more to protect myself? And what steps can I take to protect non-techy partner without burdening him or his limited patience?
One question in particular about online banking – is there a security difference between using a bank’s website or its standalone app?
Thanks.