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User accounts

You might be the only person who uses your personal computer, but that’s no excuse to get slack where security is concerned. Most people think having a password when your computer starts will protect them.

To a certain extent it will, stopping a casual passersby from snooping around your emails or stealing your internet account details and downloading their own music and movies, but it’s not going to prevent cyber criminals from hacking your machine after its stolen or using spyware access tools, especially if you only have one User Account.

Windows’ default account is what Microsoft calls an Administrator account. The account allows the user to alter Windows’ configuration, install software and lord it over every other person with an account on the machine.

Lord it over others

If you haven’t set up any other accounts on your machine then yours will be an Administrator type. While it sounds ultra-secure the nerds think not. However you should definitely setup a password for the Administrator user.

If you’ve installed any software on your machine the User Account Control should have kicked in to ensure you really wanted to put the software –something like Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft Office – on your hard drive. The message, before installation, is “Do you want the following programs to make changes to this computer, while you are installing new software”.

Only someone with an Administrator account can click Yes or No which, hopefully, ensures you only install software you want and not something some nefarious cybercriminal wants to put on.

Then go standard

To reduce the risk of cyber criminals installing malicious software, like spyware and viruses, it is best to create what Microsoft calls a “Standard” user account for everyday use. The reasoning is that Standard users have far less ability to cause any damage to a machine and so does the cybercriminal.

In a Standard account you require the Administrator password to change Windows settings and install new software, and will not be allowed to say yes or no to new installations without it. It’s effectively another layer of security for an age where every cybercriminal is working on new ways to get into your computer.

Remember another layer of security is the strength of your password. It needs to be something that is not obvious to anyone who knows you, and contain a mix of numbers, letters and symbols. For example Windows 7 is a poor password for your user account, but M1cr0s0ft@W1nd0ws7 is better.

It’s also a good idea not to use the same password for all your online accounts because if someone cracks it they have cracked them all. Especially do not use the same password for internet banking as anything else. Nor is it a good idea to write your password down anywhere.

To set up a new User Account go to Start>Control Panel and click Add or Remove User Accounts. You can set a complex password for the old Administrator account and downgrade your existing user account to Standard user here, but don’t forget to choose different passwords.