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What should we, developers, tell our relatives about ?

Nans Dumortier on February 10, 2019

As a web/mobile developer, I feel like my job is very obscure to most of my relatives.
On the other hand, it seems to me that some technical knowledge might be useful for anyone, to have a better understanding of the web in general.
What should we, developers, teach our relatives about ?

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Molly Struve (she/her)

Security!!!

As someone who works for a cyber security company, I am constantly trying to push my relatives to be more safe online. I often get asked, "How do I prevent myself from being hacked?" and my first answer is always, "Turn on Two-Factor for every possible account you can!" After that I usually tell them to try to find a good password manager so they can create randomly generated, different passwords for every account. I kind of feel like its my duty to scare them a little to help keep them safe on the internet 😊

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Nans Dumortier

You're right, it is definitely important to tell them about security!
Some of my relatives also asked me questions about suspicious emails they were receiving. I've seen plenty of phishing attempts!

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Antonio Radovcic

Secure Passwords, AdBlockers, good Hardware/OS-Choices

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Nans Dumortier

How do you proceed, to give good hardware or OS choices ? :)

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Antonio Radovcic

Buy devices which will be updated in the coming years, so rather get iOS than an el-cheapo-china-android-phone.
Prefer MacOS to Linux to Windows.
Update often and instantly.

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Chris

Chromebooks are great for someone who just needs online access. They auto update and have built in security, would definitely be my suggestion for people with limited computer experience.

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Nans Dumortier

I never tried Chromebooks but I must say that the seem to be a great budget option for simple online access !