Spring clean your online life

Spring is a great time for a clean out — so why not give your online life a fresh start as well. Refreshing your online life is simple and can greatly limit the exposure of your information online. Here are some tips to get your digital spring clean started:

1. Clean up your computer. Ensure all your software is up-to-date and you have anti-virus software installed which is regularly scanning for malware.

2. De-clutter your mobile devices. Check you’ve made the latest updates to your phone. Delete or uninstall apps you no longer need and apply updates to all apps you want to keep. You can even set these updates to happen automatically.

Delete temporary internet files and other unnecessary data, to free up more space on your phone.

3. Delete or de-activate old accounts. Getting lots of junk emails for services you subscribed to but now no longer use? You can delete these accounts and unsubscribe from marketing emails. This should clear out your inbox and make it easier to spot phishing emails.

4. Back up what you don’t want to lose. Once you have purged your computer and devices of unwanted files, back-up everything you want to keep. You can choose to back up to a cloud provider or to a hard drive you keep offline.

5. Search for yourself online. See what information you can find on yourself and find out the source. Are your social media accounts using effective privacy controls? Review privacy settings on all of your accounts. Ensure you understand how each platform protects and uses your information.

PLAN AHEAD Set reminders in your calendar to do each step throughout the year. Allowing automatic updates for operating systems, software and apps can save you the trouble of remembering. You can also set back-ups to happen automatically as well.

Your information is incredibly important. Freshening up your online life regularly will help protect your information and your privacy.

Read more about protecting your personal information. (This article courtesy of staysmartonline.gov.au. )

Sackville Street works

As part of Yarra Valley Water’s Kew/Balwyn water upgrade project, works will begin in Sackville Street with tree-trimming between 8.45am and 3pm on Monday 22 until Wednesday 24 October. Please be aware that during this time traffic will be contra-flowed under direction of traffic controllers so plan ahead and allow for extra time to get to your destination.

Scholarship deadlines extended

WEP Australia is Australia’s leading not-for-profit student exchange organisation and is offering two $1,000 scholarships for semester and year exchange programs departing in August 2019. For anyone interested, they have extended their student exchange scholarship deadline to 28 October 2018. See flyer available here for full details.

Next newsletter

The next edition of the Secondary School newsletter will be published on Wednesday 31 October. To read previous issues or our Arlington and Alumni issues visit the iNewsletter Library here.

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