Customize settings

- [Oliver] Many of the different programs that we use to browse online allow us to customize the settings, and this is something I recommend that you take the time to do. This ranges from customizing the settings on your operating system, your browser as well as an individual program, such as your email, LMS or social media accounts. Now it would obviously be impossible to go over all the different operating systems, browsers and programs in this video, but let's take a look at a few examples. Currently, I'm on a MacBook and in order to adjust the settings to this operating system, I can navigate to the Apple icon in the upper left.

From here I'll click on System Preferences. Now this is specific to my Mac; however, you will have the ability to adjust settings on a PC as well as other devices. Now you can see the different things that I can adjust here. For instance, one of them is security and privacy. And from here, I can change my privacy settings, my general settings as well as my file vault and fire wall. If I click back you'll see that I have a wide range of other things I can select from. I can adjust the settings for my internet accounts, my network or sharing.

Now I'm going to close out of this. For my internet navigation I'm currently using the Chrome browser, which has its own settings. In the upper right corner, I'll select the three dots icon. And from here I'm going to click on Settings. Now again, I can change settings within here, including things like whether or not I want to enable guest browsing, or let anyone add a person to Chrome. Down at the bottom I can click on Show Advanced Settings, where I can adjust some of my privacy settings, passwords and forms, web content, network and more.

I even have the ability to click here on Content Settings and I can change things such as blocking third-party cookies and site data. I can decide whether I want to show images or not and more. So there's quite a bit that you can adjust on here and I highly recommend that you take a look at it and adjust the things that you are comfortable with. If there's something you're not quite sure about you're probably going to want to keep it on the recommended or default setting so that everything does work smoothly. Now you may be using Internet Explorer, Safari or some other browser, but each of these will have a settings option that will allow you to customize the settings.

And we can take this one step further and adjust the settings within individual programs. I can do this inside of my email account. So I can go inside of Gmail and adjust my settings there. More importantly, I can take a look at the settings in my social media accounts. Here I'm going to click on my Twitter account. And inside of here I also have the ability to adjust my settings. I'm going to go over to my picture, or icon, in the upper right, and from there I'll select Settings. And from here, you can see on the left-hand side the wide variety of settings that I have the ability to adjust.

Now most people I talk to never adjust any of these. But I do recommend that you take a look at them. One of them is security and privacy. Here I can decide whether I want to be very secure and verify any login requests. I can require personal information to reset my password. I can have it so that no one is able to tag me in photos. I can protect my tweets and make them more private. So as you can see there are a lot of different settings that we can adjust to make ourselves more protected. Now one of the settings I recommend you take a look at for any software programs is for automatic updates.

Keeping your software up-to-date with the latest patches and versions can help to avoid viruses, malware and other problems. Adjusting all these settings can be tedious. But I recommend taking the time to do it. Once again, this is a situation where a little time up front can save a lot of time, money and headaches down the road.