How to Secure Yourself in the Internet?
Every Internet user risks their data. Data can get at best to marketers, whom they will help sell more products, and at worst, to scammers who can steal money from you and your loved ones.
What happens if the data ends up in the hands of fraudsters?
Data is stored on servers, bought, sold, used in a variety of ways, and sometimes stolen. Consider situations that will happen to personal data if they are available to intruders.
If there was a leak of information from documents? Fraudsters can use the information to commit illegal acts with real estate, take out a loan on your behalf, or simply provide information to third parties who can interfere with your privacy.
The most common online threats
Clone site. The address of a clone site is often very similar to the original one. Therefore, it is important to read the address carefully.
Fraudsters create replicas of well-known websites, such as banks, job search services, hotels, or online stores, and use them to steal data and money from random users.
Phishing. Cybersecurity experts believe that phishing is now in its heyday: the amounts that scammers manage to steal by sending emails with links to malicious resources or fake SMS from a bank are growing every year.
For example, when a person is called and informed that some amount of money has been withdrawn from his card, but the operation can be canceled if he names the card details, this is phishing, and the caller is a scammer. The same applies to letters about winning the lottery or inheritance in another country. Both situations are possible but extremely rare, so it is important to check the information and not take hasty action. If it is a letter, check the email address with the official one. If about a call from the bank, call the bank yourself.
How to protect your data on the Internet?
Set complex and different passwords. The best password is one that you can remember but is difficult for scammers or password-guessing algorithms to find out.
It is good if the password contains numbers, letters, and special characters – colon, exclamation point, period, a hyphen, and others. Such a password can be generated. This character set is hard to remember. For this, there are password storage services.
Protect mail. When registering on websites and social networks, the user is always asked to provide an email address. This means that with its help you can access accounts: reset passwords and change them. The best way to protect your primary email is to create a special account that will be used to sign up for questionable sites, dating apps, and other services that you don’t fully trust.
Use Two-Factor Authentication. With two-factor authentication, in addition to the password, additional data is needed to enter the account: for example, a code from SMS or the answer to a security question. Such measures greatly complicate the task of scammers who managed to steal your password. Most likely, they will not waste time on your account and will be engaged in hacking less secure ones.
These are just the basic rules. To know more about the Internet security and how to protect your data enroll into a special Principles of Internet Safety course by The Skills Network.
WANT TO RECEIVE PERSONAL, STYLISH SUGGESTIONS TO YOUR EMAIL?
FILL OUT THE FOLLOWING FORM: