These IT habits should be avoided

In today’s world, the daily han­dling of IT is unavoid­able. Over time, behav­iour pat­terns and habits in rela­tion to IT use creep in, which can have neg­a­tive con­se­quences in many cases. No mat­ter whether it is because of your own com­fort, igno­rance or years of damage-​free action. The boomerang comes back and with it the unpleas­ant effects.
But what are most IT habits, what are the con­se­quences and what is the solu­tion? Every­one should admit to them­selves which of the fol­low­ing IT habits apply to them­selves and how these can be reme-​died as quickly as pos­si­ble.

Too many pro­grams spoil the com­puter

Even though Ger­many is regarded as a mas­ter of waste sep­a­ra­tion, this does not mean that every-​thing that is not impor­tant is thrown away at the same time. This applies in par­tic­u­lar to the pro­grams on the com­put­ers. There are numer­ous messies among PC users, which col­lect count­less pro­grams and add-​ons in the course of time and thus fill up the com­puter. Although sep­a­ra­tion is dif­fi­cult, it does not require six media play­ers or five browser tool­bars on the hard disk to work effec­tively. This collec-​tion of unnec­es­sar­ily many dupli­cate pro­grams spoils the per­for­mance. Due to the col­lec­tion, there are increased dropouts in the com­puter and slow exe­cu­tion of the pro­grams. For this rea­son, it should be reg­u­larly checked which pro­grams are required and which can be dis­pensed with.

One mouse for every­thing

The times when pro­grams can only be opened with a mouse click are over. Many may not have no-​ticed this change, but there are numer­ous func­tions that relieve the user of time and work. These include in par­tic­u­lar the key com­bi­na­tions, whereby
many pro­grams can be opened and closed directly. An easy com­bi­na­tion with great effect is Win­dows + num­ber to open a pro­gram from the taskbar. Depend­ing on which pro­gram is to be opened, the num­ber is used. Win­dows + 6, for exam­ple, opens the sixth pro­gram, which is located to the left of the start but­ton. Save time and avoid the mouse.

Scan­ning for more secu­rity

Anti-​Malware and Fire­wall are for­eign words? The only pro­gram installed for pro­tec­tion is a virus scan-​ner? Tro­jans and viruses find a way to the com­puter faster than any user can guess. Because if the account is attacked once, the con­se­quences are great. For this rea­son, it is not enough to install a cur-​rent virus scan­ner, but also a good backup sys­tem and anti-​malware to close pos­si­ble loop­holes in the mails. The stored data is too valu­able to dam­age or even lose due to insuf­fi­cient secu­rity pre­cau­tions.

Small trailer – many clicks

Admit­tedly, most users are annoyed when a pro­gram from which noth­ing hangs up. No mat­ter if the rea­son is an over­load or if a Flash plug-​in fails. Most of them then resort to dras­tic means to fix the prob­lem, in their opin­ion. But click­ing with the mouse on any­thing that might change some­thing or try­ing wild key­board short­cuts doesn’t solve the prob­lem. This even exac­er­bates the prob­lem, as addi­tional com­mands are assigned to the PC, which increases the over­load and, con­se­quently, the com­mands may be exe­cuted incor­rectly because a delay has occurred. What really helps is the Task Man­ager (CTRL+ALT+ESC) to shoot the desired pro­gram.

One e-​mail address is enough?

Not in today’s world, where per­sonal data such as one’s own e-​mail address must be stored on nu-​merous web­sites. No mat­ter if it is a newslet­ter reg­is­tra­tion, order, sale or some­thing else. If you want to com­bine every­thing, both pri­vate and busi­ness, with an e-​mail address and think this makes sense, you are wrong. Every­one should have at least one dis­pos­able email address to use for all spam. At best, there is a pro­fes­sional e-​mail account, a pri­vate one for friends and fam­ily and one for all irrele-​vant reg­is­tra­tions and newslet­ters.
Auto­mat­i­cally started pro­grams
Not only too many files and pro­grams on the com­puter cause the device to become longer and longer, but also too many auto­mat­i­cally started pro­grams. In the course of time more and more pro­grams are added to this func­tion, in return the unused ones are not removed. This means that more and more pro­grams open at startup, even those that are no longer needed. The Task Man­ager under Autostart can be used to pre­cisely con­trol which pro­grams can be omit­ted at startup.

Are you unsure whether your data is prop­erly pro­tected, whether the han­dling is cor­rect or how you can make your IT house­hold more secure? The IPD NOW team will help you in any case.