Our digital era is rife with incidences of data breaches and cyber hacks. It’s up to you to be vigilant and understand what the newest threats are and how to protect yourself and your business. We echo our CEO, Francis Dinha, in his FORBES POST where he wrote, “In our current climate, all of us must do more to understand the motives of hackers and other bad actors so that we can take the necessary precautions to protect ourselves online. For that reason, we must all work continually to stay educated and savvy about protecting our information.”
Hackers use tried and true methods of attack, such as phishing, malware, and ransomware, but there are some new threats lately that you should understand and better prepare for.
Many of us are now aware of how phishing emails work, and can spot them before we become victims — so hackers have started targeting people through phishing text messages. It’s a pretty simple process: A user receives a text which contains a link. If they click on it, they’re tossed down the hacker’s rabbit hole.
Most smartphones have a ton of personal data stored on them — by following links in phishing texts, hackers can gain access to all of that data.
So what can you do to protect yourself?
Be smart about these texts and protect all of the information on your phone — from your address, SSN, credit card information, logins and more!
Scareware is a form of ransomware, which most of us are aware of. The twist that a scareware attack takes is using a pop-up dialogue box on a website to scare you into calling the spam phone number. Here’s what happens:
So how can you protect yourself from a scareware attack? Easy: Be aware that computer pop-up messages will never include a phone number to call. Don’t call the scam phone number and instead close the box as well as the website in your browser. Problem solved!
We are bombarded by targeted ads all of the time – on the websites we visit, through social media, and in emails and text messages. Hackers have jumped into this game as well, using it to lure in more victims. These malicious ads may look like tech support messages, such as “your Adobe flash player is out of date; click here to update.” Recently, an ad security company, CONFIANT, REPORTED UNCOVERING A MASSIVE SOCIAL ENGINEERING CAMPAIGN, which they nicknamed Zirconium. A billion harmful ads were posted online, with the intent of luring users to “scammy sites and trying to social engineer them.” Shutting down these criminals isn’t happening anytime soon, unfortunately. Louis-David Mangin, Confiant’s CEO and co-founder said, “No one has ever gone to jail for ad fraud. It’s an incredibly lucrative avenue that is relatively safe for them to practice.”
So what can you do? Don’t click on website ads. Ever. Never ever ever. Search for it from your browser bar if one of them really catches your fancy, and that way you can be confident that you are accessing a legitimate website.
It’s important for all of us to be aware of new threats and scams so we can protect ourselves from becoming victims. The worst thing we can do is be ignorant and hope that these vicious cyber criminals will just go away. PrivateTunnel’s VPN helps protect against malicious threats by blocking malware and DDoS attacks, and prevents MORE THAN ONE MILLION CYBER THREATS A DAY. By using this product, you can rest easy knowing that your personal information will be kept safe and private.