The world is going digital so is criminal activities, there is so much to hacking and cybercrime like never before these days. It’s so bad when we think of the internet as a place that is supposed to be a safe haven but in a particular kind of light is the worst place you can have any type of your information at.
There are so many web platforms with people creating accounts under them daily. These accounts contain vital information about us and unauthorized access to these accounts could prove very fatal.
Why People Get Hacked
Anyone’s life can be measured in information. Getting access to information about someone compromises the person’s security in a certain way. What better way to get someone’s information than through his or her online accounts.
Statistically, public figures, high profile, verified, and popular accounts are mostly victims of hacking activities. The average person won’t really be disturbed with hacking issues unless it’s a mass kind of hacking.
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Altogether getting caught in any kind of social engineering or cybercrime can have very lethal consequences. These days the main consequence of being a victim of cybercrimes is financial losses but there is more to it than that.
It all depends on the kind of information about you online or offline the perpetrators have access to. Either way and whatever information is stolen, you still stand to lose.
How to Decide You’ve Been Hacked
The good thing about being hacked is the fact that you would be able to figure it out and probably put a stop to it if you find out early enough. Sometimes it’s almost impossible to put a stop to it especially if the hackers are fast.
The only alert or bell that rings when you’ve been hacked is the ability to spot unusual activities. Little or large indications that show you something is wrong. Unusual activities that you have no idea of.
Unusual activities in your social media accounts, missing money from online accounts, unexpected software installs, unexpected pop-up messages in web browsers, and any other activity you have no idea about.
Sometimes it might not be as a result of your carelessness or ignorance, it might be a data breach issue from the network’s or organization’s end.
What to Do When You’ve Been Hacked?
You’ve just found out that you’ve been hacked, what to do? Get back in control, it’s not that easy and you might not be successful but it will be worthwhile.
For social media networks, all you need is recovery steps for compromised accounts. In most cases, you might need to contact the company that owns the social media network through its customer care services.
Recovery steps mostly involved contacting the company that your account has been compromised, answering vital questions about the account, and changing the login credentials of the account. It’s also important to inform people of what happened to your account.
That way you get people aware of what’s going on and create a certain kind of perception among the public.
Prevention
Having to go through all this process just to recover a hacked account is stressful and detrimental to the mind’s state. Most people after experiencing situations as being hacked online, tend to always feel insecure.
Thus, it’s best to try as possible to avoid being compromised online. Hackers don’t magically get into your accounts, they operate based on the information they have on you.
Don’t just put information about yourself online. Limit the number of contents you post online, because would-be hackers pick up a lot of data from your posts online.
Be very clever when it comes to visiting sites online. Do not accept cookies from sites whose characters are questionable. Do not download or install files from webpages that are not secure.
Having a strong password is a very good tip. But is there anything termed a “weak password”. There are just “common password” or passwords that people would believe you would use. Hence the trick to creating a password is doing an out of the box thinking.
If you believe your online presence is under threat by hackers, then you should opt-in for Google’s Advanced Protection Program. There are a lot of programs that could help you protect your presence online.