As we approach the holiday season, the bad guys don’t take a break. In fact, the volume of purchasing and online activity increases, and therefore the bad guys up their game.
In today’s episode of Scammers Abound, we remind you to stay vigilant online during the holiday shopping season.
These 3 simple tips can help you protect yourself during the holidays:
Know who you are talking to:
- If a deal online seems to good to be true, be careful. Make sure you know who you are talking to online.
- If a company calls claiming to be your bank or credit card company and asks for your information, politely hang up and call them back on a number you know.
Have good passwords:
- Make sure you use good AND long passwords.
- If you like dogs don’t use your dogs name
- If you like fishing, don’t use ‘GoneFishing’ in your password
- If you like camping do use a password like – “ILike!!ToSitOnACHAIR11”
- This password can be remembered but has nothing to do with you so a bad guy can’t guess
- Use pass phrases of 12-16 characters
- Phrases are easy to remember but harder for badguys to guess.
- Good passwords don’t have words in them that people would know about you
- Strong passwords are LONG
Don’t be in a hurry:
Many mistakes that let the bad guys in are because people are in a hurry. During the holiday season we are all very busy. Don’t let getting busy stop you for asking the question:
- Do I really know who called me and is asking for a password? Are they really Microsoft or Google?
- Do I know the person that emailed asking me to click on this, is that really their email address?
- Do I trust this link?
Take an extra second and double check these things.
If you’re not sure, please feel free to reach out to NGT by going to http://www.ngthelp.com to call, email or chat with our help desk staff!