Tips for cleaning your digital life

With much of our time online these days protecting our digital life should be a priority, but it's hard to stay ahead of the hackers.

"Security is a very hot topic, as it should be," says Hugh Thompson, chief security strategies and Vice President of Blue Coat Systems . "People do not think about digital spring cleaning, but it is quite crucial and important these days."

To protect your identity, experts recommend to give your online business a thorough cleaning and are recommended to start their activities on social media.

All accounts that are used must be stopped. "One of the biggest reasons to get rid of these things is that you do not know what happens to them," says Thompson. "For example, there may be a privacy setting or change the provider of social media may be different now."

For social networking sites that you use frequently, you should check your privacy settings at least once a year (more often prefer to experts) to ensure that you understand the changes and to know the best way to secure their information. You should also consider whether their profiles are similar to other viewers.

"If you regularly to the public on Facebook ( FB ), you have a good idea of what appear to the world, "said Renee Schmidt, founder and managing director of consulting company SheSquad.

She said the time to consider who or what is still online, make sure to take everything with what you want to show the world aligned. "We often do not realize how everything that happens to us, is shaping the world view," he said.

Facebook has a feature that allows the notifications can disable person without unfriending, and Twitter has recently launched a mute button.

Online Passwords should be changed frequently. Many consumers have been forced to their default passwords Heartbleed to change security, but should not have much contact you to remember strong passwords and change them often.

"How many times have you entered a password in the User name field, and will be by chance?" Thompson said. "[Password] will sit in a newspaper somewhere."

With changing passwords, take the time to update your challenge questions. Many of these questions and answers have been created years ago and now much of this information can be easily found online.

Now is also a good time to store digital data. Schmidt suggests that people store their data on a quarterly basis, when a removable hard drive or in the cloud.

If you choose a physical backup, experts recommend storage outside your home or in a test.

"People often make a backup hard drive and put in the draw," says Schmidt. "There is a flood or fire, and the laptop is that the reader to guess."

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