Security and Risk Online: Basic Precautions to Protect your Identity Online

Do you feel protected from hackers? Do you still think that until now, your online accounts or money hasn’t been hacked yet? Whether you know it or not, hackers have probably hacked your online accounts already. And maybe, your personal details are currently in the black market on sale and available for viewing.

While it may be pretty much difficult to completely protect yourself online, taking some basic precautions can make your identity less appealing target for cybercriminals.

Take note of the following simple ways to keep your identity safe when you’re online:

1. To check if your personal information has been already compromised, you can check it by using this site: hasmyidentitybeenstolen.com which is a legit site that lets you input your email to determine whether your details have been stolen or not and if it is already available for viewing in the black market.

2. Regularly monitor your online bills and statements for any suspicious transactions that you know for yourself you haven’t made. Checking account balances and financial transactions using a software application like Mint.com or CreditKarma.com are one of the best ways to help detect fraud and stop it before it gets out of control.

3. Make sure to boost the security of your Wi-Fi connection at home by resetting the factory password on your wireless router. When accessing public Wi-Fi, do not choose to bank online or login your social accounts because free, public Wi-Fi and hotspots are prone from cyberattacks.

4. For added security, ensure that your system is up-to-date. There’s a reason why your software is requiring for an update so don’t get annoyed with the constant notifications that keep on popping up on your computer or device. Downloading the latest version of your software will guarantee that you’ve got the most current security measure in place.

5. Be cautious of phishing scams, they will send legit looking emails claiming that they are from a reputable company and will ask for the confirmation of your personal and financial details. Do not fall for this kind of trick!

Online Info Blog: Essential tips on preventing fraud

Cyber criminals defraud millions of people each year stealing millions of dollars from victims and continue to invade the internet using various scheme and techniques.

Their target is always our money so they will do everything to obtain private information and financial data from us. For this reason, we need to protect ourselves from their evil schemes. Here are some that might help you escape from becoming a victim.

- Destroy receipts, bank statements or invoices and important documents that contain your personal information using a paper shredder to retain its confidentiality.
- Be updated on latest modus operandi of fraudsters on ATM’s or cash machines. Before withdrawing, check the machine for any signs of tampering and if you find one, report it immediately to the police or concerned bank.
- When shopping online, consider the use of Verified by Visa or Mastercard SecureCode for added layer of security when transacting online.
- I know that you have heard this many times but once again, frequently change your passwords for extra security. Choose a password that cannot be easily guessed, I advise to create a password with a combination of number, letters, and special characters and don’t use the same password on all of your online accounts.
- Keep your personal information private. Make sure to background check the people or organization you are dealing with before giving any sensitive information to them.
- Keep track of your transactions and compare it to your bank statements. If you find an error or any unauthorized activity then contact your bank immediately to settle any suspicious activity on your account.
- Don’t be a victim of fake emails where they are asking for your bank details or offering free trials and gift coupons. Ignore emails from unknown senders and contact your bank instead for your concerns.
- Install and keep your antivirus updated. You are leaving yourself vulnerable if your antivirus software isn’t updated against the most current viruses that have been created by cybercriminals.
- Frequently check your credit file as it records details regarding all your dealings. There might be unauthorized or fraudulent activities on your credit reports so make sure to keep track of all changes.
- Make sure that your firewall is in place because hackers might steal your sensitive personal information if you don’t have a barrier between you and the internet.

Online Info Blog: MoI urges residents to keep vital info

The advisory has come in the wake of the growing challenge posed by cyber criminals, many of whom are based abroad and thus out of the jurisdiction of the local law enforcing authorities.

"Modern electronic crimes have come to be a great challenge for the entities concerned in the county due to the international nature of the crime. Many of the cases also are of a sensitive nature involving the personal and private aspects of the victims," Colonel Ali Hassan al-Kubaisi, head of the economic crimes prevention section at the Criminal Investigation Department of the Ministry of Interior, said.
In a statement issued on Sunday, the official said cyber criminals have made "great advancements" in their modus operandi which make it difficult for the ordinary people to escape their attacks. "The most common ways of online crimes are blackmail and fraud." He said such crimes are witnessing a "major advancement" due to the rapidly developing technology, as criminals quickly adapt their styles and methods with such development.

"To combat such crimes, Qatar has issued Law No 14 for 2014, which has provisions to fight most forms of online crimes and provide for strict penalties for each category of such criminal action." The official said that many people "overuse and misuse" new online technologies to insult or defame others thinking that they would not be easily caught by the security department. But he said criminals cannot escape the long arms of justice.

Online Info Blog: Role of identity verification

As we reach the end of 2016, we can finally pause for breath and take stock of what has been a tumultuous year. Old certainties were turned on their head, new realities took their place and across business, economics, politics and society, experts were left scratching their heads in confusion.
In the area of security and fraud , there has been a consistent trend in the development of verification and authentication technology. How this trend will continue to impact the digital economy 2017 will be critical.

CNP Fraud

2016 Trends - The EMV liability shift in the US was widely predicted to see a spike in CNP (Card not Present) fraud in the US and beyond. Figures from the end of Q2 2015 to Q1 2016 (which takes in six months of post-EMV activity) suggests that there has been a 137 percent rise in CNP fraud in the US. To put this into context, between 2014 and 2015 the market saw a mere 20 percent rise in CNP fraud.

2017 Predictions - The US switch to EMV is only one-third completed, however as more and more merchants adopt EMV terminals, fraudsters will more into the CNP space resulting in a rise in CNP fraud.

Mobile Banking

2016 Trends - With 70 per cent of the UK population using mobile banking, it is now the dominant form of bank interaction for UK consumers.

Sharing Economy

2016 Trends - At a value of $15bn per year, and predicted to reach $335bn in the next decade, the global sharing economy represents one of the largest and fastest growing markets in the world. The UK sector alone is set to climb to £9bn from £500m in the next ten years.

2017 Predictions - With the recent announcement of TrustSeal, Sharing Economy UK’s initiative to boost consumer trust by requiring businesses to meet a list of ‘Good Practice Principles’ relating to things such as identity verification, product transparency and customer service, the importance of using technology to secure authentication and verification has never been more important to businesses entering the sharing economy in 2017.

Online Info Blog: The central role of identity verification

As we reach the end of 2016, we can finally pause for breath and take stock of what has been a tumultuous year. Old certainties were turned on their head, new realities took their place and across business, economics, politics and society, experts were left scratching their heads in confusion.

In the area of security and fraud , there has been a consistent trend in the development of verification and authentication technology. How this trend will continue to impact the digital economy 2017 will be critical.

CNP Fraud

2016 Trends - The EMV liability shift in the US was widely predicted to see a spike in CNP (Card not Present) fraud in the US and beyond. Figures from the end of Q2 2015 to Q1 2016 (which takes in six months of post-EMV activity) suggests that there has been a 137 percent rise in CNP fraud in the US. To put this into context, between 2014 and 2015 the market saw a mere 20 percent rise in CNP fraud.

2017 Predictions - The US switch to EMV is only one-third completed, however as more and more merchants adopt EMV terminals, fraudsters will more into the CNP space resulting in a rise in CNP fraud.

Mobile Banking

2016 Trends - With 70 per cent of the UK population using mobile banking, it is now the dominant form of bank interaction for UK consumers.
Sharing Economy

2016 Trends - At a value of $15bn per year, and predicted to reach $335bn in the next decade, the global sharing economy represents one of the largest and fastest growing markets in the world. The UK sector alone is set to climb to £9bn from £500m in the next ten years.

2017 Predictions - With the recent announcement of TrustSeal, Sharing Economy UK’s initiative to boost consumer trust by requiring businesses to meet a list of ‘Good Practice Principles’ relating to things such as identity verification, product transparency and customer service, the importance of using technology to secure authentication and verification has never been more important to businesses entering the sharing economy in 2017.

Online Info Blog: Three cybersecurity trends

Many Asian organizations are ill-equipped to defend their networks from cyber-attacks simply because they’ve grown complacent that attacks will not happen to them. There is a general assumption that because the organization has not experienced a breach, they are either doing the right thing, or are not a target (and therefore would continue not to be), or both. As cyber-security continues to evolve and shift, awareness has to come from within an organization, so that cyber-security is acknowledged and prioritised by employees at all levels (including those not just in IT); this will enable enterprises to truly protect themselves.

Insider threats

It’s best to assume that anyone and everything is an insider and, therefore, a potential insider threat. In the same way, everyone can also be a potential victim. This state of vigilance would serve modern enterprises far better than broken cyber-defense models centered on “keeping bad stuff out.”

Ransomware

The Singapore Computer Emergency Response Team noted a noticeable rise in ransomware infections in both Singapore and overseas. Ransomware is a type of malware that holds a victim's files, computer system or mobile device "hostage", restricting access until a ransom is paid. It spreads via malicious email attachments, infected programmes and compromised websites. Ransomware relies on the end-user paying a fee to retrieve their data or system access, and this ransom demand can range from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars.

Ignoring Privacy settings

With the rise of social media and internet usage for personal and professional reasons, users seemingly sprint their way throughout the online universe without thinking about privacy settings. Individuals share much of their personal and sensitive information on their social media, and because of the easy accessibility to these personal information, attackers are able to take advantage of these information for malicious purposes.

Online Info Blog: Millions of Net Users Possibly Exposed

“Without requiring any user interaction, the initial script reports information about the victim’s machine to the attacker’s remote server. Based on server-side logic, the target is then served either a clean image or its almost imperceptibly modified malicious evil twin.

“Using the known Internet Explorer vulnerability CVE-2016-0162, the encoded script attempts to verify that it is not being run in a monitored environment such as a malware analyst’s machine,” and if the script does not detect any signs of monitoring, it redirects to the Stegano exploit kit’s landing page.

Upon successful exploitation, the executed shell code collects information on installed security products and performs – as paranoid as the cyber-criminals behind this attack – yet another check to verify that it is not being monitored. If results are favorable, it will attempt to download the encrypted payload from the same server again, disguised as a gif image.

Online Info Blog: Investment creates opportunity

“Japanese companies and national institutions are constantly under cyber attack, but the public awareness in Japan as to the need for cybersecurity is low compared to Israel or the United States. But now, we’ve partnered with SoftBank to establish Cybereason Japan Corp to help defend Japan,” Lotem Guy, a security research group manager at Cybereason who will be moving his family to Japan in the coming days, told The Jerusalem Post.

Tel Aviv-based Cybereason is a company that locates, isolates and responds to cyber attacks in real-time. Their platform – which relies on the company’s tech and human wealth – can find a single component of an attack and connect it to other pieces of information gathered by Cybereason, in order to reveal an entire campaign and shut it down.

“Our product specializes in identifying attacks on large organizations. Our team sits inside an organization and gathers and analyzes data from inside their computers, servers and workstations. That data is then sent to our central server, which runs on our software and studies the organization’s behavior, breaking it down into separate units. Then we can identify anything that is out of the ordinary and characterizes a cyber attack, isolate it and respond to it without disrupting the organization’s work routine,” Guy explained.

Online Info Blog: Growing sophistication of cyber attacks

Last February, hackers breached the U.S. Department of Justice’s database, releasing personal information on 10,000 Department of Homeland security employees and 20,000 FBI employees. That same month, the IRS announced that a 2015 breach compromised the information of some 700,000 American taxpayers, while the University of California-Berkeley revealed a records breach affecting 80,000 students, alumni and employees.

In October, Yahoo reported that a breach believed to have occurred in 2014 affected as many as 500 million user accounts – one of the largest such breaches to date. On Oct. 21, cyber attackers took down the internet for a large swath of the Eastern United States for most of the day, using a malware virus known as Mirai that attacks vulnerable internet-connected devices such as web cameras, DVRs and routers.

As these high-profile cases make clear, today’s cyber attackers are highly sophisticated. “These attacks just keep happening over and over again. Businesses are very anxious, and even fearful,” said Scott Logan, technical director of security for NetGain Technologies Inc., Kentucky’s largest managed IT firm with offices in Lexington, Louisville and out of state. “Many of these attacks could not only force you to lose information, but they could also ruin your brand. If you’re a bank and you become breached, how do you assure your customers that you’re going to be able to protect their money?”

The bottom line is simple. “Companies are going to need to invest in more technology to protect them from security threats,” said Brendan Jacobson, co-founder of NetGain Technologies. “It is just going to get worse.”

Online Info Blog: Most Common Types of Insurance Fraud

Insurance companies lose an estimated $30 billion per year in insurance fraud costs that have to get passed on to bill-paying consumers. You can help stop insurance fraud by contacting your state department of insurance and giving as many details as you possibly can about the fraud that you witnessed. Consumers should learn to be vigilant in identifying insurance fraud by becoming familiar with the 10 most common forms of fraud.

Stolen Car

There are two ways that criminals perpetrate the stolen car insurance fraud scam. The first type of stolen car fraud is when a car owner sells his car to a body shop to be cut up for parts and then reports the car as stolen. The body shop is in on the fraud, so the authorities are never told about the sale for parts. The second most common way that criminals commit stolen car fraud is to sell the car to an overseas buyer, make the transaction without any paperwork, ship the car overseas and then report it stolen.

Car Accident

The next time you see a car accident, you could be watching insurance fraud in action. In most cases, the driver and accident victim are the only ones in on the scheme. In other cases, the driver, victim, insurance investigators and even some of the bystanders that give statements are in on the fraud. The value of the vehicles is greatly inflated and the insurance payoff is for two totaled vehicles.

Car Damage

Any form of insurance fraud is illegal and damaging to the insurance company. Some people will report a small car accident, get an estimate for damages, collect the insurance check and then not get the car fixed. This is single most common form of auto insurance fraud going on, and it happens constantly. The people doing it see no harm in it, but the money the insurance company pays out comes from premiums paid by other customers, which will go up the more often this fraud is committed.

Online Info Blog: Beware Black Friday scams

Black Friday is still a relatively new retail trend in South Africa, which sees popular stores and brands slashing prices and giving huge discounts. The trend was imported from the US, where the event follows Thanksgiving, every year.

And given its popularity, Black Friday also brings with it a criminal element. BusinessTech has listed a few points to look out for while doing your Black Friday shopping, to ensure you don’t become a victim.

1. Know the products and relative prices

An old retail trick is to hike prices just before launching a promotion, so that the discount rate appears a lot bigger than what it is. Be a clued-up shopper, and make sure that you know what the recommended or normal retail prices is for whatever item you’re about to buy – that way you will know if you’re getting the promised discount, or just a bum deal.

2. Read the fine print of deals

When buying items (especially online), make sure you read the fine print and understand the terms of the deal, and other factors such as stock limits and delivery times. Some deals are extremely limited, or require some or other process (signing up for a store account, or buying other items) – make sure you read the fine print so that you don’t get tricked into buying more than you set out to get.

3. Watch out for ‘gifts’ and ‘coupons’

When known promotions such as Black Friday hit, there are a lot of fake deals and discounts hitting your inbox. Be wary of any ‘coupons’ sent to you that require you to give personal details to claim. Also be wary of any ‘gifts’ that have been sent to you that require the same. Don’t give your personal details out to companies, and always check to see who sent you a ‘gift’ and double check with them before claiming it.

4. Stick to trusted sites and brands

Because of the huge discounts offered during Black Friday, consumers become more ‘experimental’ with brands; you may be tempted to get an HDTV that’s thousands of rands off – even though it’s not a brand you’ve ever heard of, or from a store or website you’ve never seen. Proceed with caution – it’s best to stick to known retailers and brands if you’re looking for deals that won’t lead to disappointment later.