More ways to protect yourself on the Internet.

Do you know anyone that lives in Africa? Probably not. Don’t send any information to that person that asks for your help getting money out of Nigeria or any other country. Check out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QdPW8JrYzQ&feature=youtu.be. Don’t click on a link in any email. No legitimate company will ever send you a link. If you get a request from a friend to send them money, be very wary. They might have gotten hacked, and someone is spoofing their email. Spoofing means that the sender’s email address is legitimate, but the request is not. One of the latest is called whaling. Someone will spoof a CEO’s address by hacking the CEO’s kid or wife and sending the CEO a pdf, perhaps a request for approval for a school trip. When the CEO clicks on the pdf, they have been hacked. The hacker then sends accounting a request for a money transfer from one account to an outside account. The person in accounting just does as asked most of the time; after all, it was from the CEO. Companies have lost millions of dollars to this type of attack.

I always tell my students never to leave their computers logged in and unattended. Also, don’t write down your password on a sticky note and put it on the computer screen or the underside of the keyboard (see the previous post about passwords). Don’t leave your computer logged in when you leave your office or any public place, like the library. This semester I suggested that if they walked through the administration building at lunchtime, they could get into the university system through several computers. A couple of them did that and were successful. Don’t think that I will mention that in the future. Password protect and encrypt all of your devices, your computer, your tablet, your phone, your modem, your router, everything.