Welcome to cyber stories. while the word stories conjures imagery of fictitious dialogues, unless I state, otherwise, these stories are entirely nonfiction so let’s get right into it.
An article came across my desk last week from the AARP bulletin February 2024. The article states when hackers attacked me how I survived an onslaught on my accounts by cyber thieves. Enter enter, essentially the guy in the article had had multiple accounts compromised, including his password manager, Amazon account, bank account and others.
According to the author the resolution of all of these compromise took dozens of hours and “untold amounts of stress. Here are some lessons learned and some things that you could do to hopefully not find yourself in the same shoes.
The first thing I would like to you to repeat to yourselves is that the hacker is not attacking YOU. It may feel very personal, but the hacker is searching for money. They truly don’t care about the person behind the money. To that end, the more difficult it is for them to reach your money, the more likely they are to bounce to the next opportunity. Does the thief (Which these hackers are)go for the latest locked up vehicle or the one woth the windows down and the door unlocked?
So what can you do to make it more difficult for the hacker to get to your money? Keep all of your software and hardware updated. That means updating the software on your phones, your mobile devices, computers all of your electronic devices to include your smart TV. It is important to also keep your hardware updated: routers, switches, etc.
If your software has two factor authentication -use it! What that basically means is an addition to the password, you also have to have a cell phone and you approve the code that pops up on your phone or you have to log into a third-party authenticator and enter the code that popped up on that device. If your device has facial recognition, fingerprint readers or other methods – add them. Set all security questions and record the answers you selected.
Another thing you can do is to make sure that your “junk email address” is used for retail vendors, basically stuff that you’re never going to read and that is not gonna be tied to important things like your bank account other accounts that hold your credit card information. Have a specific email address which I call “the protected email “. The protected email address will be used for things like your bank, your Amazon account your Apple account, Gmail account..any account that is using your credit card information.
When it comes to password. It is no longer acceptable to use the same phrase and merely modify it by a number or two or a letter or two. You want to use something that is unique to your different accounts you don’t want the bad guys getting in ‘I love my university.”as the password to every account you own. Another action that the gentleman in the article took, and I wholeheartedly agree, is he froze his credit cards and bank accounts as soon as he realized something was amiss. If your phone has the ability to lock the phone you want to be able to do that via remote when you don’t have the phone as well. As an added measure, make sure your devices have antivirus software installed and current.
I will be expanding on several of these topics over the next several posts, so sit back, learn, and try not to read these stories just before bedtime.
Until next time,
Cyber Kim
Reference:
Tannenbaum, Rob. “When Hackers Attacked Me”. AARP Bulletin January/February 2024. p.22