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Our email accounts are a treasure trove of precious information to hackers. From personal photos that can be used to steal your identity, to bank statements that can be snatched to drain your finances – your email is a hacker’s dream.
Cybercrime is the world’s fastest-growing criminal enterprise and law enforcement are struggling to keep up with the international digital gangs who treat the web as their hunting ground. Only those who educate themselves on how to protect their precious accounts and passwords are safe from the legions of highly skilled criminals across the planet whose days and nights are spent on the lookout for vulnerable users.
A seemingly obvious yet essential step you can take to shield yourself from data theft is using strong passwords. While we may be tempted to use the same memorable word for all our accounts, a pet name or a favourite band, this essentially offers up all our digital profiles to criminals on a platter. It is advised that you pick different, random passwords for all your different accounts – with plenty of capital letters and numerals – and that you change them all semi-regularly.
Online users must also be extremely wary of suspicious emails that could be a Trojan horse for hackers. Cybercriminals will often pose as legitimate government agencies, such as Spain’s Correo post service, to lure you into entering their bogus site where your data could be compromised. Always scrutinise unfamiliar and unexpected emails before clicking through their links. Everyone should also be on their guard when accessing public wifi networks, hackers often set up such infrastructures to infiltrate devices.
Spain’s Office of Internet Security (OSI) recently highlighted the dangers of data theft, warning that cybercriminals “do not rest, and every day they launch attacks (…) with the aim of disabling their defenses or finding vulnerabilities” in order to “access the valuable data” stored by users and organisations.
Whether you’re a tech fanatic or a neo-Luddite, it is absolutely essential that everyone educates themselves on cybersecurity to protect themselves from the tidal wave of hacking crime currently engulfing the internet