How to Avoid Getting Hacked - Email
The internet is a powerful tool for keeping people connected at any distance, but given its immensity, it can also be an arena for hacking to take place. Email hacking is something that occurs all too often, whether it is a stranger from far away or someone very close to you who is breaking into your accounts. To help protect the integrity of your information, here are five basic tips to avoid getting your email and important communications hacked.
Look Out For Suspicious Emails
Hackers may send emails that are masked to look like they are coming from someone else. For example, you may receive an email which says that the sender's name is Google, but if you view the full email address, it may actually display an address coming from different email provider such as Yahoo or Mail.com. Also, these emails may contain links that direct you to dummy pages which again look very similar to pages you may already be familiar with, like PayPal's payment portal, but are actually a mask for something else. Even though it might seem like you are submitting a payment to a trusted individual via PayPal, you could, in fact, be sending payment and sharing your banking information with a hacker.
Be sure to check the full email address of messages that you receive to ensure they do not look suspicious. Also, check the full URL of any link contained in emails you receive before visiting that page. If a link is embedded within some text, you can right-click the link to copy the link address, then paste it somewhere so that you can view the entire address before visiting the page. If an email address does not look trustworthy to you or the messages contain questionable links, mark those messages as spam or report it to your email provider.
Choose a Secure Password
A secure password is one that is easy for you to recall but difficult for anyone else to guess, including those closest to you. Avoid using things like your name, your child's name, your house number, or other obvious choices for your password. Instead, use something complicated like a code, or choose an original statement. Use numbers and symbols in place of letters, but try not to be too obvious about the replacements. For more on how to create a secure password, check out this link. Be sure to change your password regularly, and don't use the same password on multiple accounts.
Be Mindful of Security Questions and Answers
Many systems ask their users to create a security question which can be answered if a password needs to be reset or hacking has been detected. Choose your security questions and answers carefully. Try not to be so obvious in your answers. It will be more secure for you to assign incorrect answers to your questions, making them harder for even someone who knows you well to figure out. Just be sure that you can recall the answers.
Don't Share Your Information
Giving away username and password information is something can happen easier than one may think. If you give someone the login information for one of your accounts but use the same credentials for several, you've just given that person access to more information than you may have intended. Don't share your login credentials with others. If you have done so, change your credentials as soon as possible to avoid someone getting back into your email account or any others. Contact your email provider immediately if you believe that you have been hacked. They may be able to help you avoid future hacking, but they may not be able to do much in regards to the information that was already hacked from your email.
Use A Secure Messaging Service
Some conversations that you have may not seem important at the moment, but they may prove to be quite valuable down the line. This can be true for co-parents who find themselves in dispute and are heading back to court. When messages were sent, received, and responded to, not to mention the content of the communications, can all become relevant to the case. Hacking can be more than just stealing emails; it can include tampering with the authenticity of the emails by way of changing what was said, dates that they were sent, or even deleting them altogether.
For that reason, ensuring that your most important communications are always accurate and cannot be tampered should be taken seriously. Using a secure service like the OurFamilyWizard® website can give you a space to communicate while keeping everything protected. Frequently recommended and ordered by courts across the United States and Canada, the OurFamilyWizard® toolset is built to allow co-parents to communicate and share information while keeping every entry protected. All parent activity on OurFamilyWizard® is thoroughly documented, and all communications are saved indefinitely. Plus, accounts are not only username and password protected, but multiple levels of encryption, firewalls, and high-level SSL certificates are also in place to keep every user's information safe.
To avoid getting your email hacked, it is important that you take security seriously. It's not always strangers that can hack into your email; the ones who know you the best may find a reason to want to tamper with your correspondence. Check where the emails you receive are coming from, keep all of your credentials secure, and consider using a more secure service for communications that could benefit from extra protection.