Here are some useful advices which will help you to avoid the theft of your personality.
What are the cell phone scams we need to be careful about?
Contents
- 1 What are the cell phone scams we need to be careful about?
- 2 What can we do to keep our cell phones secure from hackers?
- 3 Are smart devices like Alexa safe? Is Siri secure?
- 4 How to manage your passwords when it must contain different numbers and symbols, and you’re supposed to use a different password for every account?
There are various ways in which malicious actors can compromise your personal data over the phone. But you should be extra careful to all questions related to your financial or sensitive data such as security questions.
- Pay extra attention to your security questions and answers. Obtaining the answers to your security question allows anybody to change your password and get access to your accounts. As a rule, security questions are typical and easy to answer. It’s not very difficult to find a name of your pet or your mother’s maiden name, sometimes people share this information without even thinking this could lead to the identity theft.
- Do not share your personal information with anyone you do not know. No matter who contacts you by phone, if you are not sure you know this person or can fully trust them, do not share even a word of your personal data. Calls or messages can be made from accounts that may seem legitimate at first sight while they aren’t.
What can we do to keep our cell phones secure from hackers?
Mobile devices security becomes a matter of first importance with the growing amount of personal and business data we store on our smartphones. Even business people are used to sync outlook calendar with iPhone when going to business trip. Imagine what important data can be concluded there. Here’s a list of actionable tips that could help in keeping our smartphones secure:
- Never install apps from sources you can’t fully trust. Installing apps from the 3rd party marketplaces is not the best thing you can do from the cybersecurity perspective. The problem is those small marketplaces are the good target for hackers willing to spread their malicious apps designed to steal your personal data or show unauthorized ads on your device.
- Install antivirus software on your smartphone. Each mobile device you use to access your personal or business accounts should be protected. Even if you think you have nothing valuable on your smartphone – you are wrong. Think of your family photos or contact list – they might mean nothing to hackers but they are valuable for you, which means there’s a room for ransomware or adware. And we not even talking about the possible corporate and business secrets you might have on your mobile device.
- Update your OS and software. Installing all patches and necessary security fixes is important because this could protect you from automated attacks targeting recently found or zero-day vulnerabilities. Outdated systems have more risk to be infected with malicious software or viruses and, therefore, open to giving your data to cyber criminals.
Are smart devices like Alexa safe? Is Siri secure?
This entirely depends on which devices you have, the type of data they have access to and the features they control in your house or office. Let’s take a look at few examples. Something as seemingly innocuous as a thermostat can give the hacker a good idea of when you wake up or go to work or go on vacation. Now, imagine an Amazon Echo or a similar assistant sending everything you or your family members say to the hacker’s servers. Or what about a security camera sending data to thieves? That’s why IoT security is a next big thing in the cybersecurity industry.
Any IoT device is like a small computer and almost any computer can be hacked. This statement says that if you want your personal data to be 100% protected, just don’t own any IoT device including Amazon Echo and Google Home because there is always a chance it could be hacked. If you still want to experience what new technologies offer, then follow these tips:
- Update OS of your device right after turning it ON and install all security updates through the PC companion or smartphone app.
- Change default name of your device and set up a new pair of credentials.
- If you have sensitive or business data on PC or laptop, do not connect them to the same network with IoT devices.
How to manage your passwords when it must contain different numbers and symbols, and you’re supposed to use a different password for every account?
Having strong passwords for all your accounts instead of having just a few combinations for all your accounts will protect you from hacking. Yes, having tens of different passwords is not easy, but this could be easily fixed with having a password manager installed on all your devices. This would allow you to easily create, use and change your passwords on the go. These two tips will help you stay protected and at the same time, doesn’t require remembering tens of hard-generated passwords.
- Create strong passwords – this is crucial if you don’t want your data to be stolen or compromised. For example, B**stEv#rP@$sword is far better than your date of birth. Even an abbreviation from your favorite quote will take forever to crack;
- Consider using a password manager – in this case, you only have to create one strong password that will grant an access to a password vault. All other passwords will be auto generated and will look like this A7cfA&^C%A&f5c; and you will have an easy and user-friendly interface to work with these passwords so this would not take more time than a regular manual input.