Do not connect to another public WiFi without Bitdefender
This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Bitdefender. All opinions are 100% mine.
The final countdown has begun.
We are a few weeks away from Thanksgiving and Christmas which are big U.S. travel holidays.
While we look forward to our vacations, so do the online criminals. They know our guard is down as we begin to smell the turkey which is an ideal opportunity for them to pounce and try to steal our information such as credit card details and our username and passwords.
This is where Bitdefender comes in. Even when our guard is down as we focus on doing our own thing, we know that we are protected.
Bitdefender already protects more than 500 million devices around the world, performing 11 billion security queries per day which makes it the largest security delivery infrastructure in the world. With that kind of backing, I am happy to have it installed on my devices.
The software is laden with features which work relentlessly but here are a few of my favorite features which I use constantly:
Wi-Fi Security Advisor
When we travel out of our normal routine and especially when we travel abroad, we tend to look for public Wi-Fi networks to connect to. These are typically found around tourist attractions and are free and open. However, online criminals are masters at creating fake hotspots knowing that tourists will connect to them. They create a technique called Man-In-The-Middle where they can literally see your information as you send it into the web.
This is where the Wi-Fi Security Advisor comes in.
As soon as you connect to a public Wi-Fi that is open, unsecured or unsafe, Bitdefender pops up and recommends that you use the secure Bitdefender Safepay browser. This is a secure browser that encrypts the information and therefore keeping your activity private. So in the event that anyone is snooping on your traffic, they are not going to be able to see your info.
The Safepay Browser is just like your regular browser and allows you to browse the internet and even add bookmarks to sites you frequently visit. Knowing that your information is encrypted and kept safe from anyone watching is a superb layer of protection which I constantly use.
Bitdefender Safepay
While on the topic of the Safepay browser, as the name suggests, it was designed to be used specifically when using websites that require sensitive information such as banking sites, or PayPal for example.
The moment you enter a sensitive website URL in your normal browser, Bitdefender pops up a notification which recommends that you open the same site but inside the Safepay browser.
I love this feature! As I travel often, even within my city, I sometimes need to log onto my company’s bank account or create an invoice using my online accounting software or simply make a purchase on my Amazon account; all of these sensitive activities are protected within the Safepay envelope and kept away from prying eyes.
File Shredder
Whenever we create a file, the computer creates a reference to that file so that we can find it again. Think of it as an index in a book where you can look up a specific topic and it will tell you which page that topic is on.
When we delete a file, we are just deleting the reference in the index table but the information is still kept on the computer. In fact, there are 3rd party software that you can buy and easily retrieve information that has been “deleted”.
Part of the Bitdefender software is a facility called File Shredder which destroys the data, making it impossible for 3rd party software to recover that information.
This is super useful if you share USB thumb drives with people and want to make sure that when you give them your drive, there is nothing on it that can be recovered.
Bitdefender Autopilot
If you are not “technical” and don’t want to be interrupted by your security solution, then place your Bitdefender on autopilot and let it take care of everything while you continue to do your own thing.
Autopilot features ensure that your system has the right configuration and fixes any critical product-related issues while constantly monitoring your files to ensure that no malware has crept in and that no one is trying to hack your computer.
So in summary:
I like that Bitdefender has been created to run unobtrusively in the background. This allows me to continue to use my devices knowing that behind the scene, I have a defender that is constantly scanning and looking for unusual activities.
Some ask if we need this level of protection and the answer is a definite YES. In our world, our identities are basically data and it is more important than ever before to ensure that we defend our digital-selves and Bitdefender is the tool that does that.
For more information, make sure you check out Bitdefender 2018
