This month’s article is the first in a series dealing with the topic of protecting both yourself and your computer when using the internet. It’s timely as I’ve seen an increase in the incidence of scams and hacking landing on my desk. In future articles I will cover computer, internet browsing, and social networking security.
Email Security
Your email address is the gateway to your identity and once a scammer or hacker has gained access to it he/she can used it in a variety of nefarious ways to scam your address book and also to scam you. Observe these 6 rules to avoid compromising your email:
- Access your email account from your own computer or phone only. There are a myriad of hacker programs out there that can record anything you do on a computer. These programs are hidden so when you use someone else’s computer or a public computer you have no way of knowing if one of these programs is installed.
- Change your password often and use a cryptic password. Avoid using the obvious ones like your children’s names or your pet’s names and include upper and lower case characters and numbers in the password. Example: If your current password was beachhouse change it by adding numbers and uppercase characters to something like bEaCH2o9UsE
- Immediately delete unsolicited emails that appear in your account and do not open or forward scam emails as, while you may not be gullible enough to open or reply to the email others may. The amount of people who have been stung by these scam emails is staggering and I know of one case where over €30,000 was handed over to scammers. Be warned if you engage these people they will scam you and you have little or no chance of getting your money back.
- Never give out your email password. Your email provider will never need to know your password as they can view or alter it at any time. If you do need to give your password to a trusted computer technician immediately change it as soon as he/she is finished working with your email.
- Use your common sense when visiting websites that ask for your email address. If you are suspicious decline and do not give the site your email address.
- Never allow other individuals to use your email address regardless of the excuse. Anyone can get an email address so there is never a reason for someone to use yours.
Oliver Reidy is a computer technician and has been in the industry since 1981.Locally he is a member of Mebo (Meath East Business Owners) Http://www.mebo.biz. You can contact him via email at
