These are what the doctor recommended. He is not a medical practitioner. But, all the same, he is a doctor. For your benefits, if you follow what your physician prescribes you will be healthy. Avoid sugary drinks. Limit carbohydrate intake. Exercise daily. Keep your emotions under check. Don’t bottle things up. Forgive often. Laugh always. The bucket list of how you can live a healthy life is endless.
The above are some of the precautions some physicians-with-hands-in-the-wellness-water will tell their patients. However, practising those things does not necessarily mean you will live longer. Well, you might just live long, you know what I mean? But if you are safe offline and you are not safe online, you are not safe. Slight attack online could lead to a heart attack offline.
Anyway, the coronavirus pandemic has exposed you to a certain novel virus. It has also brought you the advantages of shopping online regularly, transferring funds online, holding electronic meetings and sending incessant emails to colleagues, friends and families. Aha, not that you were not engaging in these activities pre-coronavirus crisis, no.
In fact, you are a cyber-native. The internet is your abode. You are not about to quit your house. You live there. Congratulations. But chill. You have neighbours. Your neighbours are millions of people around the world who nurse malicious intent. They are smart. They are more internet savvy than you do.
With the COVID-19, most of your important transactions happen on the internet. While an increasingly connected world makes your life easier, it also poses a great risk. Each time you log on to the internet and engage, you expose personal data to cybercriminals. The hackers have devised numerous ways to steal your data. The stolen data is then put to misuse.
What the hackers usually do when they get access to your data is to take control of your account. They will then tweet maliciously on your behalf.
Hackers are not your friends. They are out to steal from you. They will leave you in tears. Their activities have become rampant with the coronavirus pandemic. That is because, all over the world, millions of people are engaged online. If they are not shopping, they are working. If they are not chatting, they are listening. If they are not sending funds, they are receiving funds in the form of coronavirus palliative. The palliative may come from friends, families, government, and non-governmental organisations such as foundation and religion bodies.
As a result of these unprecedented daily cyber activities, the cyber rats are always active. They are restless. They are vigilant. Because the internet does not sleep, they too do not sleep. Recently, Twitter was a victim of a major hack of 130 high-profile accounts. These accounts belong to some notable personalities like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, former US president Barack Obama, Jeff Bezos and Apple, maker of iPhone. The goal of the hackers is to steal passwords of the famous and rich. Fortunately, in the Twitter story, no password was stolen.
Twitter had confirmed the hacking. The management of the social media firm had taken the necessary step to correct the security breach. It had “locked the accounts that were compromised and restored access to the original account owners only when we are certain we can do so securely”. A media report explained that the action was a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of its employees with access to internal systems and tools.
What the hackers usually do when they get access to your data is to take control of your account. They will then tweet maliciously on your behalf. According to the BBC reports last month Twitter reported that non-business users will not be affected by the incident. Twitter confirmed that sensitive data regarding their business customers may have been compromised.
The company said some clients billing information was unknowingly stored in its browser’s cache, making it ‘possible’ for others to access. The data in question includes personal email addresses, phone numbers and the last four digits of credit card numbers.
Nevertheless, according to the story, in a case where passwords were stolen, hackers used the accounts to promote a bitcoin scam where users were urged to send $1,000 [N380,000] worth of the crypto to a specific account listed in the tweet. They would then receive double their payment in return.
If you suspect any email message, don’t open it. However, do one thing…
Back home, President Muhammadu Buhari’s medical record was hacked in 2018. This happened when he was a candidate of the All Progressive Congress. On August 10, 2019, Twitter account of the vice president, Yemi Osinbajo, was deactivated. This was done to prevent hackers from breaking into it for malicious purpose. It has since been reactivated. Recently, a video of an old man who was scammed was posted online. It was pitiful.
The scammer emptied his bank account. The old man had ignorantly given his account details over the phone to the scammer. You, too, can be scammed! But, do not worry. I had an encounter with a cybersecurity doctor recently. He prescribed some “medicine” to tackle online scamming and hacking. Here are a few of the things he recommended. The advice does not mean your data cannot be stolen. If you follow these warnings, you might be safe online.
He recommended that you should not connect to open Wi-Fi networks. If the Wi-Fi is free, avoid it. If you are using public Wi-Fi, avoid performing any bank transactions. If you receive an email asking you to do something, be careful. Don’t do it. Look for spelling or grammatical errors in the domain names or email addresses. Why is this so?
He said cybercriminals always use email addresses that resemble the names of well-known companies. To fool you, they will slightly alter the spelling. Pay attention to this. [email protected]. The email address should have read [email protected]. Before you click any link, think twice. If you are not sure, don’t do anything.
If you suspect any email message, don’t open it. However, do one thing. Move your cursor over the link. It will reveal the URL. If the URL matches the email, you can consider it. If it does not, delete it. Well, those are some of the recommendations. Follow these prescriptions. You would be safe online now, during and after this pandemic.
*Olaegbe ([email protected])
