“No one can build his security upon the nobleness of another person”. With that been said, we can safely assume that nothing is safe, especially when it comes to the internet. We have already discussed how the internet we use is just a tiny sliver of the dark bottomless matrix that we know as Deep Web.
While we enjoy our dependence on computers, be it shopping or making financial transactions with your bank, we must’ve often thought of the dangers if anyone could access your sensitive data. Sure your accounts might all be password protected. But did you ever wonder how safe password protection really is? Let’s take a look at some of the most common misconceptions related to passwords.
- Reputed Websites/Online Businesses Keep Passwords Secure – The illusion of safety has certainly led to our advancement as species but internet users often get overconfident with their security. If you think that Facebook/Gmail has a special place to store your password safely, then you’re simply mistaken. There have been plenty of instances where highly prestigious websites (Sony, Yahoo, iCloud) weren’t able to keep hackers from stealing and exposing user’s personal information.
- Password Strength Checker Makes My Account Secure – You might’ve often come across various password strength checkers while registering online. It surely makes you feel that you’ve created a really secure password, but the security is as hollow as the Hawaiians wishing for no more volcanoes.
- Obscured Characters Make Passwords Safe from Onlookers – Even if the password input box puts dots or asterisks to keep your password hidden from a 3rd It is still stored in a text form on the server, which isn’t as secure as you think.
In the words of late and great H.P. Lovecraft, “The most merciful thing in the world, is the inability of human mind to correlate all of its contents”. Like how we cannot imagine facing a monster in real life, most internet users cannot fathom being attacked by a hacker or cyber criminals. This ignorance has led us right in the clutches of attackers.
How Hackers Attack
Your online data could possibly contain sensitive information such as passwords to your bank account, personal information that could be misused in a number of ways. But to protect yourself you need to first know how hackers could gain access to your information.
- Attacking Password Storage Servers – Like already mentioned, hackers gain access to user’s information by obtaining the passwords by hacking the server that stores them. This way they can get your information without gaining access to your computer.
- Impersonating as a Legitimate Server – Another devious scheme, MITM or Middle-in-the man is commonly practiced by cyber criminals. They interrupt the communication between the user and server and set up a fake server that will receive all the information instead of the original one. This way any usernames and passwords sent to the fake server along with all your personal information will be visible to the attacker.
- Trojans, Malware and Crypto Viruses – There’s nothing worse than your computer being infected by a virus. While most viruses corrupt computer files and data, some are more sinister than others. Trojans can be used as gateways by attackers to access your system and use/steal all your sensitive information. Ransomware or Crypto-Viruses can hijack your data in exchange for actual ransom, failing which can lead to permanent data loss.
- Human Error – The most common way how such infectious programs enter your system is through our own negligence. Click-frenzy users often ignore the risks of surfing the internet and often walk such attackers right into their systems by clicking on illegitimate links and downloading files from untrusted sources.
Hence, we have established how you are not really safe from hackers and cyber criminals who roam about freely in the dark void of deep web. Nevertheless, not all is lost as there are some ways to keep yourself safe from such prying eyes on the world wide web.
Tips to Follow
Secure Your IP Address with VPN – This sure sounds like rocket science but thanks to the various plugins for browsers such as Firefox and chrome you can easily keep your online identity secure from such opportunists.
Use Antivirus – Paying money for an antivirus sure seems exorbitant to some, but this investment is totally worth it. Antivirus program not only keeps your computer safe from any infectious content from the internet, but will also keep any malicious code from being executed.
Store Sensitive Information Inside Encrypted Location – For best results and data security, create a separate volume on your hard disk to store sensitive information such as passwords, identification numbers and personal details and files. If you do not know how to encrypt your files manually, it is best to use an encryption program that will lock your data with AES encryption, accessible with a key.
Share personal information securely – Most online data theft occurs when you share information online. Hence whenever sharing data such as passwords, personal details etc. over the internet, you can use tools and programs that will put end-to-end encryption so it cannot be interrupted by MITM attacks.
Internet surely might not be the same walk in the park as it appears in plain sight. Therefore, keeping your identity safe along with your online activity is the utmost priority even if you’re a casual internet user. You could alternatively secure all your online data and make it available across various devices and location by using Systweak Right Backup. Right Backup is not just a cloud server, but will also protect your data through a highly secure encryption putting it out of harm’s way.
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