Google, Passwords and Security
This is an introductory chapter that will try to cover the parts which I feel will be useful to anyone wants to deal with the world of internet effortlessly, and rather enjoy it than considering it a burden. Feel free to just skim through the topics if you feel they are too basic.
The subtle art of Googling
So, let us start with the basic question, what is Google? In short, its a company that has created a search engine, wherein you just type in whatever question you have, and voila! It gives you everything that was ever posted on the web regarding that topic (well, most of it, but we are not covering that here. Google ‘Dark Web’ if you are too curious). For now, try searching about your favorite food, you wont regret it! I am going for chocolates.
Now, most of the time, just putting in the phrase ‘chocolate’, or ‘gajar ka halwa’ can give you the desired results immediately. But sometimes if you are trying to find something that is a bit tricky to explain, you can use some tricks that have been brilliantly explained by Vikas Yadav here. It might feel a bit advanced and you wont get to use it, but its good to know things!
When NOT to use google search
If you know what you are looking for, you don’t always need to google it. If you are looking for a website for the first time, sure, go ahead, but if you know you need this in future, you can save time by creating a Bookmark! Yes, just like the one we use in our books, so that we don’t have to skim through the pages to start from where we left. You can know all about bookmarks here.
Google Account
Google is not just for searching stuff and getting results. It has its own extremely useful products like Gmail, Google Drive, Google Meet, YouTube and so much more. The most important step towards getting started with those is creating an account. All we have to do is enter a username that can be easily identifiable as ours by others and a password that obviously nobody can guess or know apart from us. Easy-peasy? Well, it does become a nightmare if you keep forgetting your password every time and have to click on ‘forgot my password’.
Google has an excellent mechanism in place if you forget your password, do visit the attached link to know about it, but if you don’t want to let that happen, always set a password that should be random for others, but completely relatable to you (maybe something you secretly like, but others have no clue of the context). Setting date of birth as a password is not a good idea, as you might have posted it on Facebook and it will take just a few minutes of brute force trials for me to get into your account! Here is an interesting website that can help you determine the strength of your password by telling you how much time it will take for a computer to break it.
The best way to store passwords, is maintaining a password manager. It is a type of application which can securely store all your passwords. All you have to do is remember the master password which will unlock all your data. So if you think that remembering one password is better than memorizing and failing at recalling 10, go for a password manager app. I would recommend using Bitwarden Password Manager. You can download the app here. (Random tip about trusting apps — always pay close attention to reviews and ratings. People do post fake reviews as well, but you can gauge the quality of the app or software by using it for some time).
Okay so now that we have our App to save passwords, what if you lose your phone?
Not to worry, these apps have web versions as well. That is, you can visit here and get hold of your passwords!
Homework
Now that you know some things, lets complete a small assignment, shall we?
- Create your own account on google. If you already have one, log into it and send an email to me about whether this write-up was helpful to you. Paste the same statements in a Microsoft word document and attach the file with the email.
- Create bookmarks for 3 websites that you always need to visit.
- Download and use a password manager app. Create a strong master password and forget about remembering anything else!