Hackers are taking advantage of the vulnerability of those that are online, especially if you are working on home computers, laptops, and tablets. It also goes for your children who are online and visiting or downloading from sites. You may not have the necessary virus, malware, or ransomware protection that your office computer has.
So what can you do to protect yourself Here are 9 top tips to go by but not limited to...
1. Of course the obvious is to update your virus protection or if you have it loaded make sure it hasn't expired. 2. Limit sites that children can visit online. 3. Don't go to a site that has an exclamation mark (!) or a lock that is unlocked in the web address. These are sites that do not have the necessary protection that if you fill in any of your contact info or credit card numbers you are open to your personal information being grabbed. Alert the company about this, they may not understand that they are in jeopardy of losing clients. Plus, if they say it is okay - it's not. You should see a green lock. Check out the posting image to see what is a secure site should look like. 4. A lot of companies are reaching out via email as a way of keeping in contact or requesting personal information. Please be very careful filling out this information. Do not include any of your banking information. If you check the email address you will see where the email was generated from. You would be surprised where some of the hackers are from. 5. Do you have a file that has your usernames and passwords listed? Take them off of your computer and save them on either a jump drive (USB) or have them on paper. This will protect you from sharing them by mistake. 6. Don't open any attachments, especially if they are found in your Spam folder, and are people you don't know. This could also be something that someone wants you to share to your friends and family. I have seen files received with no subject line or just an image link. These are definitely not to be clicked on. 7. Use multiple passwords. It is difficult to keep track but it stops others from getting into all of your accounts. Make sure these passwords are not obvious and mix up letters, numbers, characters, and sequence. Don't use things like: password123 or abc123. 8. Don't leave your computers or phones on all the time. Give them some downtime, and not just to the sleep mode. When you are shut down you are not connected to the internet. 9. Make sure you back up your computers to either an external hard drive or to a Cloud account. That way if you do get hacked you can retrieve your information elsewhere. Make sure you back up your system regularly. If you are working on files then daily is the rule of thumb. 10. Ultimately be careful and use common sense. Family members are going to call you if they need help, they won't rely on using an email to connect. Also if you receive an email asking for you to update your information or password, call the business and don't use the contact info in the email. Go online to search and call them directly or go to your normal contact information with them. And lastly, if you have just been contacted by a lawyer via email saying you have just been left a large sum of money from a long lost family member - well don't call or email them back, especially if they ask for a payment ahead of receiving it. Sorry but it is too good to be true!
These are just some of the items to be aware of. Please take care in these times and before you do anything - phone a friend!
Hackers are taking advantage of the vulnerability of those that are online, especially if you are working on home computers, laptops, and tablets. It also goes for your children who are online and visiting or downloading from sites. You may not have the necessary virus, malware, or ransomware protection that your office computer has.
