As You're Back For the Fall, Don't FALL For the Bait
Cybercriminals are taking advantage of our trust in everything—in social media—like Facebook and instant messengers to carry out their dubious acts. Though not new, but very pervasive recently. We rely on these platforms to find old friends, meet new ones and communicate with family and friends everywhere. Hence whenever we use them, we trust that someone at the other end is genuine and who we think they are. Sadly, that's not guaranteed! A legitimate and often not malicious example is when your sibling, say Olivia, used your mom's device to message you. But they didn't claim their own identity by telling you they're Olivia using mom's phone to reach you. Thus, making you unaware of the transient change in identity. Your understanding at that point is that your mom was communicating with you. Imagine for a moment that the person who sent the message is a con artist, apparently with malicious intent. While intent varies, their motive usually is to extort money from victims as fast and as much as possible, pretending to be acting in good faith. These bad guys could gain access to the account of anyone you trust or yourself. However, seniors and typically those unaware of such threats are of high value. Then they can penetrate your inner circle—other family members and friends in your contacts or friend list—similar to how BEC frauds operate. BEC is short for Business Email Compromise. All they need is just one exposure and a successful hack. Even if the first victim is not valuable, they can use the trust people have in them to exploit others. And also use their contacts to pivot into their trusted circles. The damage could be worse. You can only imagine the reach—from zero to one, and now too many, so you always need to get things right! How could they gain access and assume the identity of a trusted person, you may ask? Via phishing bait, weak passwords, and social engineering. It is common to receive text messages claiming to come from trusted entities like your service provider or bank requesting that you take urgent action. These short messages often come from dubious numbers. You do not want to fall for that trick. Instead, take a moment to confirm the source from a known directory. To make it difficult for anyone besides yourself to gain access to any of your online accounts, here are some things to practice:
Use strong passwords on all your online accounts, and never repeat a password between accounts.
Enable multi-factor authentication on all your accounts that have the feature.
Do not divulge too much information online, especially on social media. Remember, if you share where you are online, you're also telling where you are not. Publishing your date of birth, next of kin, or mother's maiden name on your social media profile is too much information. The list is long.
Do not trust anyone or anything, at least online. Verify first!
Act now. Tomorrow might be too late.
Share this with everyone in your circle.
By Omokolade Ogunleye
