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Cybersecurity Awareness Month: How to Keep Yourself Safe from Threats
SecurityOctober 11, 2024
One of the best ways to protect yourself from cybercrime is to learn the tricks and scams criminals use to steal your personal and financial information. In honor of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, we’ve put together a list of common cybersecurity threats and how to keep yourself safe online.
Read on to learn a few ways to minimize your exposure to cybercrime.
Common Cybersecurity Threats and How to Avoid Them
As online shopping continues to grow in popularity, so do the risks of falling victim to cyber fraud. Scammers have become more sophisticated, finding new ways to steal personal and financial information through malicious ads, phishing schemes, and unsecured websites. To protect yourself while shopping online, it’s essential to stay vigilant and adopt best practices that safeguard your information.
- Be on the lookout for malicious advertising (“malvertising”). These ads, which fraudsters place on reputable sites using an ad buying network, look real but direct you to a site that can steal your card and other personal information. Rather than clicking on an advertisement, search for the item online and go directly to the seller’s website to purchase it.
- Whether you’re using a debit card or credit card, don’t save your card information on any online shopping sites, and don’t do your holiday shopping on a public Wi-Fi network. This will minimize the risk of a fraudster gaining access to your information.
- Avoid using the same password for multiple websites; hackers will often discover a password and then attempt to use it on multiple sites the consumer has visited. For extra protection, consider using a password manager which can create and encrypt unique, randomly generated passwords for you to use on different sites.
- Be aware of ”phishing” schemes. Phishing involves sending an email pretending to be a well-known or familiar company to solicit personal/financial information, particularly credit card data. You should never open attachments or click on links from unfamiliar or questionable email addresses and be aware that reputable retailers never actively act for financial data or credit card information.
- Be on guard for suspicious, unsecured websites. Watch out for misspelled websites or names that are similar, yet different, from the real company’s name. Also, check to see if “https” is included in the page’s URL; this is one important element of website security that ensures that the connection between your login and the retailer’s server is secure.
How to Protect Yourself from Cybercrime
In today’s digital age, protecting your personal and financial data from cybersecurity threats has never been more important – or more difficult. However, there are ways to protect your money and personal information from being stolen by fraudsters and scammers.
Slow down and double-check that the websites you’re visiting are legitimate. Before clicking on any suspicious links in an email or text, verify the sender is who they say they are. Always generate a strong, unique password for each site you log in to. And if a deal or promotion sounds too good to be true, it probably is!