Wouldn’t you freak out if you checked your bank account and saw a $0 balance? Identity theft isn’t too rare of an occurrence these days, yet we often fall into the trap of thinking that it’ll always happen to “someone else”. Unfortunately, we are all somebody else’s “someone else”, which means identity theft can happen to you.
On the surface, cyberattacks to unprotected home users may not appear to be lucrative for hackers, especially if you are only looking at a single instance. Attackers targeting individuals tend to keep their ransom relatively low (if compared to companies,) hoping to entice victims to pay up quickly, rather than trying to thwart the attack.
In today’s digital world, cyberattacks are becoming increasingly prevalent. 2017 was dominated by news of major hacks, cybersecurity threats and data breaches. What will 2018 have in store? Many predicted that 2017 would be the year of ransomware and that was indeed true.
You get a flood of messages from friends and family. They’re getting emails from you with seemingly random links, or messages with urgent and/or and cheesy pleas to wire you money. It looks like your email or social media account might have been taken over. What do you do? For starters, make sure your security protections are up-to-date, reset your password, and warn your friends. Read more…
So you have taken advantage of a super recent deal and bought yourself – or received from a loved one – a new computer? Congratulations! Getting rid of the old one? You can ensure its hard drive doesn’t become a treasure chest for identity thieves. Use a program that overwrites or wipes the hard drive many times. Or remove the hard drive, and physically destroy it.
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