How Do I Keep Myself from Cyber Crime in 2021 | Antivirus Software

Cyber Crime in 2021

Politicians and celebrities are not alone: ​​Every fifth German is said to have been a victim of cybercriminals. Answers to the most important questions - and seven tips

Cybercrime is a growing problem. According to a study by the management consultancy PWC on the subject of cybersecurity from 2016, every third German is said to be affected by data misuse. Germany's largest credit agency, Schufa, even assumes that at least one in five has already been a victim of identity theft.

Politicians and celebrities are particularly often victims of cybercrime and data abuse, says cybercrime expert Cem Karakaya. The former Interpol agent works in the field of prevention for the police in Bavaria and advises affected citizens. In addition, he raises awareness of the dangers in the network in lectures. "In 2016 alone, more than 500 individual orders were placed with online mail-order companies on behalf of the politicians of the Berlin House of Representatives, to name just one example from local and state politics," says Karakaya.

Points to Keep Yourself from Cyber Crime

1. Keep devices up-to-date with antivirus software, firewall, and updates: This applies to all devices that are connected to the Internet. Malware often exploits security loopholes, so you should always install updates as soon as they are available. The thesis that Apple computers are more secure than PCs is still persistent. But that is often no longer true.

2. Never carelessly publish personal data - this includes the date of birth. Because this in connection with the name is enough for a commercial credit fraud under identity theft.

3. Do not open any attachments from unknown senders, do not click on links in e-mails, only download software and tools from trustworthy websites, and carefully check the links in the browser address bar to see whether they really are the correct Internet addresses or whether they are fake pages acts with a slightly different address. In general, you should never just follow a link in online banking without a double-check. It is therefore safest to enter the URL yourself.

4. Regularly change passwords and cryptic ones that use numbers, characters, upper and lower case, and never use the same password for all services.

5. Do not randomly accept friend requests from strangers on social networks. You should also be careful if a contact sends you another friend request because their account information has allegedly been lost. Fraudsters mirror user-profiles and try to fish the contact details of friends of the hijacked user profile in this way.    

By the way, it is also good if you can protect user accounts by means of so-called double authentication with a mobile phone code. It is also important to choose security questions for user accounts in such a way that they cannot be easily researched over the Internet.

6. Set up a Google alert for your own name. Then Google informs you when the name is entered in a new place in the network accessible to the search engine. However, the Darknet is excluded from this. With the reverse Google image search, it is possible to determine whether your own images are used on other pages. You upload your photos to Google and the search engine checks whether the images appear in other places in the network accessible to you. Or you can search with an image URL. 

7. Data is an important currency. You should therefore pay close attention to which data is left behind with which service and for which service. You should also carefully review the general terms and conditions and check whether settings that have already been made are disseminating data or using them for advertising purposes. It is also helpful for ordering processes on the Internet to set up a so-called disposable email address. Then you just have to set up a new free email address in the event of abuse.