Here is a recap/additional key
points related to yesterday’s session about online safety:
-Phishing through email- Never
click suspicious links, even if they come from a friend or a company you know.
This includes links sent through emails. If one of your friends clicks on spam
they could accidentally send you that spam or tag you in a spam post. You also
shouldn't download things (ex: a .exe file) if you aren’t sure what they are or who they are from. Last year, some teachers in the CBE clicked on an
email that they thought was from the CBE requesting their Username and
Password. The credentials ended up with some hackers in China, and they used
the CBE mail system to send out spam. Consequently, CBE Emails were black listed
by many service providers
for a short period.
-Phishing websites- Sometimes scammers will
set up a fake page to look like a Social Network/Bank login/Company page,
hoping to trick you
into entering your user name
and password. Make sure you check the page's URL (web address) before you enter
your login info. When in doubt, you can always type the original website (i.e
rbc.ca) into your
browser to get to the real site
-Passwords- Use combinations of at least eight letters (ideally 11),
numbers and punctuation marks and don't use this password for any of your other
accounts. A password is great for smartphones tablets as well, but if you
decide to go with a numeric code it is a good idea to use multiple digits and
to periodically clean your screen (so fingerprints on your ‘code’ are not
visible).
-Privacy Policies – It is a good idea to read and
understand who ‘owns’ the information you post online. Last year there was a
public uproar because a
popular social media site was planning to
sell pictures of it’s users because it ‘owned’ them:
-Never give out your login info (ex: email address and
password). Sometimes people or pages will promise you something (ex:
free poker chips) if you share your login info with them. These types of deals
are carried out by cybercriminals and violate the social media terms. If you're
ever asked to re-enter your password on any site (ex: you're making changes to
your account settings) check to make sure the address of the page is still in
the URL
-Be careful what you post online, and understand
who has access to the information. There are a variety of sites like https://pipl.com/ where you can type someone’s name and location, and have
the site check a variety of online databases (like Social Media Sites).
It is used by employers to do background checks on people.
-Newer Technologies (Cellphones/Cameras/Tablets) have
a GPS chip inside them. The GPS chip is used to add additional information
to a picture (i.e Author/Location/Camera Type etc). Photos that have this
geotag information and that are shared with other people can be tracked back to
you. The process is called GeoTagging. Here is a site that shows how to
disable geotag on Apple/Android Devices:
-Deleting yourself from Social Media –http://justdelete.me/
is a site that provides instructions and
links to removing yourself from Social Media. If you decide to do this, it is a
good idea to purge the contents of your online service.
-New Types of Computer Viruses - Hackers have the ability gain control of your
computer webcam without you even knowing. If you like, you can stick a piece of
electrical tape (or a sticky) on your computer webcam.
There was a story on CNN about this last week:
-Have anti-virus software to protect yourself from viruses and malware you can go
to a site like download.com to download other free programs such as
- AVG Antivirus software
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