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You should be aware of these common online scams and avoid falling victims to these criminals. Here are some simple tips to help you:
- Educate Yourself
The most important way to prevent these harmful scams from happening to you is by educating yourself. Always verify that the company, business, or person you’re about to make a transaction with has a good and credible professional background.
You may check how many years the person or company has been in the business; look into his credentials or legal documents that prove his authenticity; ask around reference people or previous clients who can attest to the individual or business’s abilities, reputability, and integrity.
You should also be wary of any offers regarding financial services such as loans or credit cards that seem too good to be true. Generally, it pays to be careful when dealing with anyone who wants to offer you something for less than what they’re worth.
- Use Strong Passwords
Most of the time, the passwords that you use for your online accounts are very simple and easy to remember. Who doesn’t fail to remember a too complicated password anyway? However, you must keep in mind that easy-to-recall details such as your birthday, mom or dad’s name, your name, and other personal information are not very ideal to set as a password.
To keep your information and accounts safe, you will want to use strong passwords exclusively for a specific site or app and not for everything. Typically, strong passwords include a combination of letters in upper and lower cases, numbers, and symbols.
To encapsulate, here are some little tips for creating strong passwords:
- Use different passwords for different emails and social media accounts. You may use a password manager so you can track your passwords easily.
- Avoid common words and number combinations like ‘qwerty’ or ‘123.’
- Don’t use your name or birthday as your password.
- Use a combination of upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols.
- Never recycle old passwords.
- Make Your Social Media Profile Private
There are many different social networking sites, and most allow people to see each other’s information. This means that any information you post online is fair game for people to see. If you want to keep your information safe, then you’ll have to make sure that you don’t put any information on your profile that you wouldn’t like the world to see.
- Never Click Questionable Links Or Attachments On Emails
If you receive a suspicious email from your bank, company, or friend, don’t click on any links or open any attachments until you become sure that they are legit. Opening these attachments can download viruses in your computer, which helps hackers access it through the internet.
Always verify the email by calling your bank or your work’s IT personnel. Ask them if they are the ones who sent the email and what the link or attachment is about.
- Only Trust Secure Websites
Learning how to identify secure websites is a skill that’s very essential in trying to protect yourself from countless threats in cyberspace. The first tip for identifying secure websites is to check the background of the company or person who owns the website. It’s a good idea to do this because you don’t want a malicious entity taking up your valuable information.
The security signs on the website may also be helpful. Suppose you see a lock symbol before the URL of a website you’re trying to access. In that case, it’s likely that you’re dealing with a legitimate website owner. Also, a ‘Secure’ or ‘S’ extension on HTTP—making it HTTPS or Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure—indicates that a website is secure.
Summary
The Internet is so vast that you can find not only a countless number of resources but also all kinds of scams as well. Internet fraud scams are becoming more and more prevalent as most people don’t know how to tell the difference between a legitimate and unsecure website; give away confidential information easily, without looking into the reliability of a business or person they’re interacting with online.
This is the reason why you should always be informed of the different scams on the internet today. Besides that, always create strong passwords and make your social media accounts private so that cybercriminals won’t be able to obtain your information. Only trust secure websites and never open questionable links and email attachments, even if they purport to be from people you know.
