Identity theft
Identity theft happens always online when a hacker or criminal wants to have access to our personal data like name, address, amount of Bitcoin holding and online Accounts. It is really a criminal abuse to have identity theft happen, when our identity will be stolen and used for abuse by criminals online. Our identity documents will be used to order from dark net markets, make a criminal business or similar, where our stolen identity will be used.
There are several ways Identities are stolen, I would try my best to itemize a few and possible ways to curtail/prevent them
- Data breaches: This is when companies that has user data have their databases compromised or intentionally sell user data for financial gains. In this scenario, The user has not much power over such activity and can only initiate legal actions against the company.
Secondly, Your accounts can be hacked and all your data would be in the hands of the hacker.
- You should setup 2FA where necessary and be sure to use unique passwords, also never store your passwords on the browser since hackers can trace the browser file path on your computer and retrieve the passwords file and encryption key - Phishing: This are deceptive emails, or texts containing malware that possess your computer or suspicious links that can direct you to sites that would Obtain every data entered there. For example, a clone of your crypto wallet provider sending you mail to verify account or seeking additional information.
- Do not click suspicious links or even open the emails, not to talk of downloading its attachments
- Verify URLs before doing anything on the site. Watch out for typos in domain names
- Social Engineering: Manipulating a user to share confidential data or gaining undue access to the victim's remote computer during online meetings and retrieving confidential information from such computers.
- Beware of calls/texts from scammers claiming customer care representatives and do not give in to the urgency in their antics.
- Disable remote access to you computer on Zoom or any other online meeting software when having meetings online
- Malwares and Keyloggers: Malicious ads can install spywares that uses different methods like OCR(Optical Character Recognition) to steal data from your device and also Keyloggers can be installed to retrieve every single character you type into the device.
- Avoid Suspicious websites
- Use paid version of antivirus and constantly update it when necessary.
- Avoid pirated software as much as you can.
- Public WIfi Attack: When you connect to public wifi's, you might be revealing your data over an unprotected connection and it is important to know that every data sent over WIFI networks are visible to the provider and susceptible to data harvesting if the provider has ulterior motives
- Avoid logging into confidential accounts over a public wifi
- Disable auto connect when using public wifi's. This is important so there would not be mistakes and it reconnects without your notice, and you mistakenly send confidential data over it thinking it was your own protected network.