Digital safety: 3 Tips to keep your devices secure

Remember even the rich and famous like the U.S. rapper Kanye West had his phone password broadcast to the entire world and so together with our tech director Iain, team Mobiddiction thought we’d put together three tips for Kanye and others on how to stay secure on all your devices and reverse the threat of cybercrime. Secure your passwords, use a password manager, use 2FA where it’s available.

Remember, just because you have an email which looks like it’s genuine or seems like it’s from someone you know does not guarantee legitimacy.

Ensure more online safety during COVID19.

Our Director Mike Vasavada states:

“It’s perhaps the most important time to pay attention to your online history, specially as everyone is using all sorts of digital tools to stay connected” 

This is the time to stay most aware of your personal transactions and where you flash your credit cards or the websites you visit.

Digital is an easy to transact but also perhaps the easiest way to get information out of your computer or smart device.

5 TIPS TO STAY SAFE ONLINE:

1. Update your passwords regularly.
2. Read point 1 again.
3. Use a password management tool if you can.
4. Do not text, email or send passwords to others.
5. Double confirm before transferring money (even if you have to ring that person and go through the account details to ensure safety).

1) Always use a password manager.

This makes it easy to never “re-use” passwords, so if a site gets hacked and your password gets stolen, that password cannot then be used to access any other sites. It also makes it easy to use strong 15+ character random passwords without having to remember them. Installing a password manager and starting a process to change or upgrade to using strong and unique passwords everywhere is probably the number one thing you can do to reduce the risk of falling victim to hackers.

2) Two Factor Authentication (2FA).

“If it’s offered, you should seriously consider using it”. There are a few common forms of 2FA, with differing levels of security but all of them are more secure than not using them. PayPal only offers SMS 2FA right now – which is perhaps the least secure common option because an “attacker” can call up your phone company and try to convince them to allow access to you account, or set up a new SIM (this happens way more often that you’d expect and is much easier than most people think) – so be careful.

3) Security Apps

There are a selection of phone apps that let you use authentication numbers that change every 30 seconds (this is called “TOTP” or Time based One Time Passwords”). Google Authenticator, Authy, and 1Password all have this capability. At the highest level are hardware 2FA keys like YubiKey or Google’s new Titan Security Key. There are a few different versions of these – but in general they plug into your USB port (or connect via Bluetooth) and let you tap a button to authenticate. Keep in mind, as you increase the security on your online accounts, making it more difficult for an attacker to break in, you also make it more difficult to log in yourself, that’s why it’s a great idea to make sure you have two YubiKeys kept in a safe place, and to make sure you have the 2FA app on at least two devices. That way if your phone breaks, gets lost or stolen, you have a backup plan to get access.

If you want to know whether or not your  information has been exposed, subscribe to https://haveibeenpwned.com.

Remember, these days spam messages are not always about sending monies to your long lost uncle from Nigeria. Spam comes in all shapes and forms, there are way too many websites, apps, social media accounts and digital interactions and hence there are more “digital footprints” you are leaving behind.

Stay Aware. Stay Safe.