Security online is a mess.
There’s really no other way I can put it to be honest with you. It’s just a mess. If you want to secure your identity online it’s no easy task.
You can’t really ignore securing your accounts though. If you do then eventually you’ll get burned somehow. Maybe your Facebook account will get hacked and someone will use it to siphon money from all your “friends”. Maybe your bank account will get hacked and your money will be stolen. Or maybe someone will get into your bitcoin exchange account and take all your bitcoins.
Sometimes the mess that a hacker or identity thief makes can be cleaned up pretty easily. That’s not always the case though. More often than not if someone steals your identity or breaks into one of your accounts then you’re going to have a hard time getting things back to normal. Best case scenario, you spend a bunch of time trying to get things fixed. Worst case scenario, you get a bunch of your money stolen from you, never to be retrieved.
What should I do to my online accounts?
With all this doom and gloom you would think it was impossible to keep things safe so what’s the point? That’s exactly the type of thinking that’ll get you into trouble. Don’t be lazy with your identity. You need to protect it.
Fine, I get it. I have to protect my identify online. What am I supposed to do?
You can start with the easy stuff, like making sure you have good, long passwords. Making sure you don’t use the same passwords in more than one place. Making sure you use two factor authentication with a hardware key or an authenticator app whenever possible.
If you’re not doing at least those things then you really need to wake up and get serious. Thieves are everywhere online, and if you don’t protect yourself they will take advantage of you.
Protecting your accounts online and protecting your identity are not exactly the same thing though. You should be doing both. Some of you might consider identity theft monitoring. If you’re the type that doesn’t care to keep track of what’s going on with your identity then this might be a good way to go. Lots of security experts have recommended using such a service.
Don’t be fooled into thinking that’s all you need to do though. Getting someone to watch your identity can help block some things, but you’re the first line of defense. Defend yourself with everything that’s available to you.
So what’s available?
1- Secure your email account
One of the most important things you can do is to secure your email account. Gmail gives you the option to use 2FA (two factor authentication) with a hardware key. This is one of your best options these days. You can also turn off all the other account recovery options so that it’s a lot harder for people to hack into your account.
Remember how you answered all those security questions for your accounts? Questions like, “What’s the name of your childhood pet?”, and “What street did you grow up on?” or “What’s your mother’s maiden name?”. A good hacker will find this information and use the password recovery options to gain access to your account. Don’t give them a way in. In order to do that you have to turn all these things off so that you also can’t get back in yourself. It can be a pain if you do every forget your password, but it’s the safest way to go assuming you won’t forget your passwords.
2- Secure your phone account
There’s been a few hacks that involved getting into your phone account first. Because of these incidents it would be wise to secure your telco account. You should setup a passcode or PIN that has to be used whenever you want to make any changes to your phone account. Put a lock on your SIM and put a port freeze on your account if you have those options.
You should also consider getting a separate Gmail account that you only use for your phone. This can help compartmentalize your problem if a hacker were to get into your phone account. Some experts believe that a determined hacker will eventually gain access to your phone account if they were really determined. Because of this some have suggested changing to a phone account that doesn’t have any human interaction in order to avoid social engineering hacks.
3- Stay up to date with the latest security trends
Your best available security options will likely change again in the future. It wasn’t until this past decade that two factor authentication became more available to help with the more and more people that were being hacked. Using strong passwords alone was not enough so a bunch of two factor authentication options came about. Some of these 2FA options are better than others (Hardware keys, authenticator apps) and it’s likely that this advice will change as time goes on. The best thing you can do is to stay up to date and do a little research to see what others think is the best way to keep yourself safe.