How to deal with potential scams
Right now, scamming is extremely popular, and some scammers are making £100,000's in short amounts of time by stealing other people's hard-earned money!
A lot of you may have noticed the recent influx in random text messages or emails that have a new and creative way of grabbing your interest, such as: Texts claiming to be your child, saying they have lost or broken their phone and asking you to send them money so they can get a repair or replacement, fake Royal Mail messages asking you to make a payment so your order isn't returned to the shipping address and many other suspicious messages.
Recently, scammers have been constantly popping up all over the globe to try and cash-in on other peoples hard-earned money and steal as much as they can, as fast as possible. This is why it's crucial to keep up to date on how to protect yourself from these scammers, and what to watch out for so you can notice that you're not dealing with a legitimate person.
One key thing to consider is the fact that phone numbers, and sometimes emails, can be "spoofed". Spoofing is a trick hackers and scammers use to mask their real phone number and project the appearance of a different one, often something like a bank or a delivery companies' number. When a number is spoofed you may feel comfortable providing information to them that you shouldn't be giving out under regular circumstances, so keep in mind: just because you can see the number, doesn't mean you're talking to a trustworthy person. A good way to avoid being tricked by someone who is spoofing is to contact the company directly. For example, if you get a text message from your bank asking you a question or to provide some kind of information, go away yourself and call or email the bank from a number or address that you type in yourself, that way you know exactly who you are talking to, and you can get an accurate and trustworthy response on how to respond to the other situation.
If you do find that you have been hacked, on a personal device for example, there are some important steps you must take to reduce the amount of damage that the hackers can cause. First things first, if you think a device has been hacked, change all the passwords associated with that device, but change them from a different device. So, if you're phone is hacked, go onto a computer and change all the passwords that your phone has saved within it. If your computer was hacked, go onto your phone or tablet and change the passwords to the websites that you might have saved on your computer. This way the hacker will only be able to do a limited number of things and hopefully won't be able to take full control over any of your accounts.
What steps can I take to avoid being hacked or scammed?
There are a few measures that you can take to minimize your chances of being a victim to one of these scams or hacks.
Passwords
A lot of websites will require you to have a strong password, such as one containing at least 1 capital, at least 1 symbol & number and a minimum number of characters. This is a great practice and should be enforced by any site that you need a password to access personal information, but not all sites have this feature. So, you need to focus on this regardless of the password parameters recommended by the website, if any.
Your passwords should be different between all of the websites that you use, this way if you are hacked or your password is leaked from a website, your other accounts will still be protected and won't be at a risk of being hacked by using the same password. We recommend that you contain the following in each of your passwords as a minimum -
1x Special Symbol (!"£$%^)
1x Capital Letter
1x Number
& at least 8 total characters
2 Factor Authentication
Also known as "2FA", 2 factor authentication is the process of adding another step to log into your account. For example, a lot of people use an application known as "Google Authenticator" which is an app you can download on your phone and set up to link to your online accounts. You can also connect a phone number or email address, so you receive a code when you attempt to log in and the log in won't work unless the code is correctly inputted.
Stay Updated
There are constant developments within the world of protect us from scammers and hackers. Windows is updated often, and usually the most recent updates available are the ones which are the most secure and have the highest protection from these types of threats. If you have updates available on your phone, tablet or computer, make sure that you are downloading and installing them if you have the option. This will further improve your devices security features.
If you believe you have been hacked on a device which is linked to your bank account, immediately get in contact with your bank and tell them about the situation, each bank will have its own protocol on what to do in this scenario and you can follow their advice accordingly.
The best way you can protect your computer from being hacked or from receiving a virus is to have anti-virus protection, if you're interested in getting yourself protected via anti-virus, get in contact with us today on 01273 256786 and we will help to make sure that you aren't the victim of a scam. Alternatively, leave your details in the contact form below and we will get in touch with you as soon as we can.
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