Back to School Security tip #10

10. Get It Back. It just takes an instant of inattention to leave your laptop in a lecture hall. You may be careful to lock your dorm room door, but if your roommate is a flake, a thief could easily make off with your PC while you're both out. Consider investing in a little protection, in the form of anti-theft software. Our Editors' Choice in this category is LoJack for Laptops by Absolute Software, which can still function even if the thief formats or swaps out the hard drive. Note, too, that security mega-suite Bitdefender Total Security (2014) has an anti-theft component built in, along with just about every other security feature you can imagine.

Google has you prepared for your death!

If you use Gmail or any other Google service, you may have seen a prompt at some point to set up Inactive Account manager. This feature is designed to give someone else access to your Google account if you die or become incapacitated.

The service basically lets you set up a timer and notification so that if you don't use your Google account for a period amount of time, Google will notify whoever you name and give them access to selected parts of your Google account. It's one of the many ways you can arrange to pass on your digital life after you pass away.  For more, read the full article here.

Back to School Security tip #9

9. Beware Insecure Networks. Your school likely doesn't have a big IT budget, and what they do have is probably devoted to fixing outages. Security? They haven't had time to think about it. Whether you're using the school's network, or free WiFi in a coffeeshop, your connection could possibly be open to snooping by other users. A VPN (Virtual Private Network) utility will both protect your connection and let you surf anonymously. There are plenty of good free VPN clients to choose from.

Back to School Security Tip #8

8. Don't Be Fooled. Got a text or email message promising quick bucks for working at home? Or an offer to share in a big reward, for a small initial investment? Don't believe everything you read, especially in your Inbox. Some scammers see students as easy marks; it's your job to prove them wrong. Watch out for phishing messages pretending to come from your bank, or even from your university. If you're not sure whether a message is valid, navigate to the site yourself and check it out, or phone the relevant department; don't click any links

Back to School Security Tip #7

7. Keep Malware Out. The archetypical starving student doesn't have any cash to spare. Downloading pirated software and tunes is one way to save money, but doing so can expose you to malware. In fact, you can run into malicious code even on perfectly legitimate sites, through "poisoned" advertising links. The best free antivirus tools are better than many of their commercial competitors, so there's no excuse for going without antivirus protection. PCMag's Editors' Choice products for free antivirus are AVG Anti-Virus FREE 2013 and Ad-Aware Free Antivirus+ 10.5.

Now Microsoft is warning you...get rid of XP or face the hackers!

Microsoft yesterday warned Windows XP customers that they face never-patched, never-dead "zero-day" vulnerabilities if they don't dump the 12-year-old operating system before its April 2014 retirement deadline.

Call them the "walking dead" of vulnerabilities. Call it XP Z -- "Z" for zombies.

The warning -- just the latest in a two-year campaign to denigrate XP and convince users to leave it behind -- was similar to one given earlier this week by a long-time SANS security trainer, who predicted that hackers would save their vulnerabilities until after XP's retirement, then unleash them on unprotected PCs.

So you are clear, if you are running a computer with Windows XP after April 2014, you are out of luck in getting patches and repairs to the OS.