It is not only the regular customers that are at risk of online fraud. Recent data breaches show that businesses and vendors are also at a major risk of email fraud, online fraud, and social media fraud.
For regular customers and consumers, they can protect themselves from fraud by taking certain precautions but for businesses, it is imperative to have a company-wide security plan in place to ensure that none of the employees mistakenly lead the sensitive data of the company or give access to unauthorized people unknowingly. Many of the safety precautions that the customers and consumers take can also help protect the businesses but businesses should also have dedicated IT departments in place to ensure that their sensitive data is secure.
If you are someone who wants to avoid getting fraud by anyone on the internet then here are 5 Tips To Prevent Yourself From Online Fraud:
1. Keep Your Passwords Secret
The first thing that you should do is always keep your passwords a secret and never share your passwords with anyone. Your financial data and everything else is as secure as your password and if you are sharing your passwords with someone then you are also giving access to your sensitive information including your financial data.
Always change your passwords regularly for better protection and if possible then you have an app that can create and save strong passwords for you. Using a combination of upper-case, lower-case letters along with numbers and special characters makes a secure password.
Also, change your wireless network default password as well as the default SSID. Don’t share the wireless network password with anyone when you are performing financial transactions and avoid leaving any sort of documents in public places that contain access or information about your financial data.
2. Beware Of Phishing Emails
Phishing has become a common thing nowadays and the scammers have become so smart that they create such web pages that are almost identical to the real websites and trick users into giving them their login credentials.
Whether you are an individual consumer or a businessman, you should beware of phishing emails. These emails are designed to prompt you into opening links provided within the email to provide them the login credentials. Some emails contain malicious links that can install malicious softwares and programs on the device or computer that you are using to access the email and these malicious softwares can then obtain your personal information without you even knowing it.
Whenever you receive an email that asks you to verify yourself or change your account credentials in some way then always make sure that it is from the real company or business and not from a scammer. Scammers may send you an email containing a webpage where it asks you to change your banking credentials. Always contact your banks first before entering any such information.
3. Never Share Your Financial Data With Anyone
For individual consumers and business users in particular, never share your financial data with anyone over the internet. It has become a common trend nowadays that scammers use different socializing platforms such as Chatroulette, Facebook, Twitter, Omegle, etc to trick users into sharing their sensitive, financial information with them.
Always make sure that you don’t ever share your financial information with anyone, in any way whatsoever and whenever you are performing banking and other financial activity, use a separate device or computer from one that you regularly use for other purposes because you never know your device might be infected with a malware that can leak out your sensitive information.
4. Know Who Is Asking For Your Information
As mentioned above, you may receive emails pretending to be from your bank or your financial company but you should know one thing that banks and other such companies don’t send emails or text messages asking for personal and sensitive information which may include your login credentials, social security number, etc.
Banks also don’t require you to verify your account by providing them with sensitive information. The most they would ask is your security question, date of birth, or any such question that is less sensitive but is enough to verify that it is you.
Remember to never share any kind of personal and sensitive information, especially your social security number, tax ID numbers, account numbers, or login and password with anyone. If you receive any such email or text that looks like it is from your bank or supplier then contact them before responding.
5. Secure Your Device
Cyber attacks are on the rise and you may become a victim of one without even knowing. You must keep your device secure by installing antivirus software and regularly updating the software that comes with the latest security patches to prevent you from being a victim of a cyber attack.
You can also take other security measures such as installing anti-spam software on your email, enabling the firewall, both on your device & network and installing an anti-spyware program that can prevent installing of spyware on your device that can monitor everything that you are doing on your device.
