RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – North Carolina, the nation’s ninth largest state in terms of population, is hitting below its weight in a new study about cyber paranoia and personal privacy. Maybe that’s good news?

The Tar Heel state ranks 17th in “most paranoid state” rankings as cited in the new report from digital security firm TechShielder.

California tops the list in rankings based on total number of searches about cybersecurity per month and how many searches per 100,000 of state’s populations.

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North Carolinians make more than 23,000 searches, Californians more than 300,000.

Search terms included:

  • VPN [virtual private network]
  • Private Browsing
  • Incognito Mode
  • Delete Cookies
  • Change Password
  • Private Search
  • Erase History
  • Clear Cache

Reasons to worry

There are good reasons to be worried about keeping data safe.

“Around 2,200 cyber-attacks occur every day in the US, according to research by the University of Maryland,” TechShielder notes. “This equates to over 800,000 Americans falling victim to cyber-attacks every year.”

Given the raw number of attacks and risks, a spokesperson for TechShielder says “it’s unsurprising that many are looking for ways to keep their data safe.”

Steps to security

So what’s a person to do?

Here are some recommendations from TechShielder:

  • Educate yourself on how to spot suspicious emails.
  • Checking for obvious signs such as bad grammar, requests for you to act urgently, and requests for immediate payment are all red flags.
  • Also, make sure you are using strong passwords that cannot be guessed easily.
  • Make sure all your passwords are different for each device – laptop, phone, and tablet.
  • Secure your wireless network with a password. This prevents unauthorized individuals from hijacking your wireless network. Even if they are only attempting to get free Wi-Fi access, you don’t want to share private information with other people who are using your network without permission.
  • Don’t forget to delete old files and cloud backups from your devices. If you back up your files to the cloud, remember that even though you delete them on your device, they’re still stored in your cloud account.