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From out my profession I have a lot to do with informationsecurity. Just the other day I was in a conversation with a colleque and he said that he thought it was way overdone how people react to information security, cybersercurity etc. Of course I didn't agree with him because I thought he was reacting to light in it. So I tried to convince him at least of my point of view.

First I started out with the whole hacking, phishing and virus attacks. I told him that a lot of attack now are being prepared trough "Social enginering", for the people who don't know, social enginering is a tactic used by hackers to gather as much as information of a person of company by looking for this information on:

• websites
• social media
• trough phonecalls to a company

When they connect this information together they can get a lot of information about someone, for instance a brithdate (Facebook), a location where someone lives (Instagram of GPS tracking) , bank account number (from the receipt someone leaves at the grocery). With this information hackers can create a pretty good profile of a person. When they know the location of that person they can try and hack their computer or mobile to gather more information, for instance a copy of a ID card which is stored on the local harddrive from that person. With all the previous information it is a piece of cake to open a bankaccount on that person's personal information. I know it sounds like a reall crime serie from TV but that is for real how hackers work without you even knowing it.

A real life example of a hack from which criminals took a lot of money from people was the Dutch site "Marktplaats" it's a kind of a local Ebay. They pretend like if they were interested in article the seller had to offer and agreed on a price. The criminal then sended a message with a link to a paysite (which was copied), in the message he asked the seller to transfer a amount of 1 cent to proof the seller is legit and no scammer (the criminals made the excuse they were scammed before etc.. ), so the seller makes the transfer on a scam site and the criminals then have all the acces to the bankaccount of the seller, they rip the bankaccount and the seller is left emptyhanded with no money no more on his bank account.... This is actually happening online on all kind of marketplaces…

So what can I do to avoind being hacked or targeted by Cybercriminals?

• Use encryption on your laptop or PC
  (Windows Pro has bitlocker, or use a alternative Veracrypt, Macbook uses Filevault)
• Rename important documents , for instance "my_pasport.doc" is Obvious, rename it or encrypt it too.
• Put a little sticker on your webcam so it can be used (against you) from the outside. The same for the mic.
• Make back-up's regulary and don't forget to test the restore.
• Save the backup's on a different disk or place then a connected or mounted drive. The reason for this is that if your backup device is attached to your local computer or laptop and a Ransomware attack takes place, it also encrypts your backups. And then you have nothing.
• When you encrypt your smartphone don't forget to encrypt the SD card too, this is often forgotten.
• Don't use only a 4-digit pincode on your mobile but also a strong password.
• If you don't need bluetooth or GPS turn it of in case of tracking or bluejacking
• look out with social media on your smartphone, often they use more data from your Phone then you know
• Only visit websites with HTTPS (SSL security) instead of HTTP. HTTP isn't secure. There are already browsers how won't show sites without a SSL certificate.
• With password's it is Always better to use 2FA (2 factor authentication) for instance a password and a pincode. Google has a good 2FA tool (Authenticator) for 2FA.

So really do think twice before you enter a site, create a password because there are really cybercriminals out there trying to steal your information and money...

So stay SAFE,

Have a great day,

Peter

I fully support @s3rg3 and @exyle, who are witness with their developer group @blockbrothers for the Steem blockchain. If you want to support them, they would appreciate your vote here.


They are the creators of Steemify, THE notification app for your Steemit account for IOS.

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