According to Statista, between November 2021 and October 2022, almost 16,000 cybercrimes took place worldwide. Intuitively, the more time you spend online, the higher you are at risk of becoming a target. Bad things that can happen to you include data theft, scams, and cyberbullying, to name a few.
Here
are a few safety tips you need to know if you spend a lot of time online.
1. Use a strong password
While
most cyberattacks do not come from people you know personally, having
easy-to-guess passwords can put you at a high risk of losing your data. Some of
the people involved in stealing personal information use quite sophisticated
methods to achieve their objectives and might know more about you than you
suspect. As such, don’t use passwords based on your birthday, name, or any
other details that might be publicly available. Also important, don’t use
passwords that can be easily guessed by default, such as 0,1,2,3 or 1,1,1,1.
For
stronger protection, passcodes can be complemented with two-factor
authentication (2FA). This step typically involves a code sent to your mobile
device. By enabling 2FA, you make sure that an account cannot be hacked as long
as the associated mobile phone is in your possession, even when someone has
managed to discover the account’s password.
2. Update your software
regularly
We
are used to receiving software update notifications from our devices’ operating
systems, as well as from most of the apps we use. While constant update
requests can be bothering at times, they play an important role in ensuring the
software we use contains the most recent security patches. New cyber threats
are discovered every day, meaning that the more you postpone updating an
application, the more vulnerable it becomes.
For
the reasons exposed above, you also want to update antivirus and anti-malware
as regularly as needed. You can think of these programs as your digital
guardians that can only function properly if you take proper care of them.
Having your antivirus software up-to-date along with your apps and operating
system should ensure that your overall risk of becoming a cyber victim is low.
3. Don’t readily respond to
emails from unknown senders
If
you have ever checked your spam folder, you know it’s full of all sorts of
messages that are trying to persuade you to engage in specific actions. Typical
spam messages include product promotions from unknown sources, suspicious prize
reward notifications, and even marriage proposals.
Some
of these emails are very dangerous, as they may contain links that, once
clicked, will redirect you to pages with software meant to harm your computer
and/or steal your data. For this reason, it is best practice to never click on
links from unknown senders.
Other
types of emails don’t contain links but request you to provide them with your
sensitive information. For example, the email might inform you that you have
won a prize and need to provide your credit card details to receive it. Such
emails are always scams, and you should report them as phishing.
4. Investigate the people who
contact you
Some
people underestimate just how easy it is to pose as someone else over the
Internet. For example, you might get contacted on social media by someone
pretending to be your friend you haven’t seen for a while or a distant
relative.
Alternatively,
you might receive an email from someone pretending to be a representative of
any organization. Such emails will often contain the name of the organization
in the email address, but a careful inspection of the address should tell you
that the sender is likely someone else. For example, a company will usually
have a professional email that ends in a format that resembles @companyname.com. Any email sent from a
personal email address (e.g., one ending in gmail.com
or hotmail.com) is a red flag.
While
you should never provide credit card information or other sensitive details to
strangers, you can use people search websites to find out whether someone is
who they say they are. On Nuwber, you can find anyone’s phone
numbers, addresses, criminal records, social media profiles, and other useful
details.
5. Be careful with cookies
Cookies
are text files stored on your device by websites. Many of them serve useful
purposes, such as remembering your login details or site preferences. That
being said, companies mostly use cookies to find out information about your
preferences so they can serve the content and ads that are the most likely to
resonate with you.
Some
people see cookies as an invasion of their privacy, and many sites make it
possible to only accept the necessary cookies. By learning more about them, you
can decide for yourself what data you are willing to share with third parties
and what data you aren’t.
6. Only make purchases on secure
websites
To
make sure your payment information is not exposed to third parties, never make
purchases on websites that do not use SSL encryption. Today, most, if not all
browsers, will inform you if a site is secure or not and warn you against
making payments on one that isn’t. The simplest way of knowing if a site is
using SSL is by looking at whether the URL starts with https or not.
Bottom line: It’s better to be
safe than sorry
Protecting
yourself against cyberattacks and other online dangers may occasionally require
a bit of effort from your side, but it’s well worth it. By regularly updating
your software, using 2FA, and avoiding providing sensitive information to third
parties, you are likely at a low risk of contributing to the statistical values
provided at the beginning of this blog post.
Last
but not least, don’t forget that as the online world evolves, so do
ill-intentioned tactics. In other words, it’s not only your phone or computer’s
software that needs to be up-to-date, but also your mental ‘software’. The
world is changing fast, and the better prepared you are for potential threats,
the more likely you are to fully enjoy the new perks that come with
technological development.
