Good Digital Hygiene, A guide to staying secure in cyberspace written by Ed Gelbstein. When Hagel wrote this well-known statement, poor hygiene was not recognized as a contributing factor of disease. Several plagues devastated populations over the centuries and the measures taken by the medics of the time did not focus on hygiene – a surgeon would typically wash his hands after performing surgery, not before (and of course no anesthesia or antisepsis). As far as the author is concerned, poor digital hygiene, as introduces here, is at the stage comparable to that existed in Vienna when the Great Plague hit: people are unaware of the need to protect themselves and are not particularly bothered with digital hygiene despite many guidelines and good advice being readily available. In addition, malicious software such as viruses, worms, Trojan horses, etc., continue to evolve faster than the capability of protective products to detect them and clean them. Every person has a role to play to prevent and/or reduce the impact of a cyber-plague. It may not kill millions of people but could make life quite uncomfortable. This book describes in simple, non-technical language a collection of good practices that can be considered as sensible good hygiene. None of them is obligatory but there is a consensus that these things make sense. It may include terminology that may not be familiar buy is nevertheless extensively used in that I.T. industry. The book is divided in just a few fairly short chapters and includes selected sources for additional material.

In this book the readers will read Purpose of this book and summary of key points, A scary story for grownups, The inhabitants of cyberspace’s hostile side, Good digital hygiene: the essentials, Malicious software, Anti-virus and firewalls, Use a vault, Bad ideas, Disposing of your devices, Backups, Passwords, Personal identification numbers (PIN), Choosing software for your devices, Downloads, Sharing your devices, Locking your devices when not in use, Securing online transactions and httpss, Your footprints in cyberspace, Who is watching your online activities? Your browser disclosures, Your cookies, Your disclosures, What others may be saying about you, Your IDs and privacy in cyberspace, Being selective about who is in your network, Social media and Internet memory, Hygiene and the cyber-minefield, Spam and scams, Phishing and spear-phishing, Attachments, Click here to follow the link, Unencrypted “free” WiFi or WLAN, Encrypting your domestic WiFi, Bluetooth, Logout of everything you do online, Beyond the essentials, Inventory of your devices, Crapware, craplets and scareware, Inventory of all your accounts, Lost your smartphone or your computer? Tracking software for electronic devices, Remotely wipe the contents of your lost device, Encryption and digital signatures, Geo-tagging, Legislation you should know about, Jail-breaking or rooting your devices, Good hygiene in the future, Coming your way: the Internet of Things, Digital hygiene in 2003 and much more.

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