If the spring season has brought an urge to scrub your living space from top to bottom, why not clear out the digital detritus cluttering your electronic devices and online accounts at the same time? Carrying out the digital equivalent of spring cleaning a home isn’t just an opportunity to tidy up our online lives. Eliminating dust bunnies like dormant accounts and forgotten files can help protect personal data, according to cybersecurity experts.“Clutter is fuel for scammers. Old accounts, exposed data and forgotten apps give them more ways in,” Michael Sherwood, a product vice president at cybersecurity firm Malwarebytes, said. “Cleaning up your digital life is one of the simplest ways to shrink your attack surface in a threat landscape that’s getting smarter, faster, and more automated.”Here is a digital spring cleaning checklist:
Free up storage space Does it seem like your phone or laptop is always running out of storage space? All those photos, videos and other big files that we share or download add up over time.Running out of internal storage can slow down devices or prevent them from downloading essential operating system updates. Personal gadgets usually come with built-in tools that instruct users on how to free up space.On iPhones, go to your settings menu, then General, and then iPhone Storage, where you’ll see how much storage is left and which apps and files are eating up the most space. On Android devices, the Storage tab in settings provides a similar breakdown, with options to free up space manually or automatically.
