TrueCaller an international phone directory was recently
hacked by hackers group known as the Syrian Electronic Army. Reports say that the
hackers group downloaded more than 450 GB of user’s data from the TrueCaller’s
servers and thus having the details of Millions of Account. Well, this is not
the only victim of such act…every other day we get to hear such news…The news that’s
related to you, your personal data as you might be thinking to sign up for such
service, it’s better for you to get updated with such news.. And With this
online popular service being hacked, we have a question to ask ourselves…Is our
online data secure enough and should we trust the online services to store our data
and our personal details? Well, the answer obviously would be “don’t know” for
most of the users. (Why not? As not all people are security/computer experts :P) If you are a security expert or a software engineer …you might be
aware of the fact that not all systems are secure. Security loopholes are being
discovered everyday and to fill these loop-holes …patches are being developed .Anyways,
there are some tips I’d like to share with you folks …if you follow these 4 tips,
I’m sure that you may not be a sufferer of the incidents as the one mentioned
in the first few line of this article .So let’s look at them:-- Never Share Passwords:-I know you’re smart enough to not share it …but Its my job (as I’m writing this post) to make you aware of this point.To avoid yourself from getting irrelevant mails(spams) to your inbox ,make sure that you share your email-ids with the people whom you trust and know personally.
- Don’t Click on anonymous Links:-Someone might send you a mail/message containing a hyperlink “Click Here” (which might be a trap to steal details of your account or hack it using the phishing method)…You should take the pain to check out the status bar of your browser and check out the address of the link (by hovering your mouse over the link)…if you know the service (link) then click on it else leave it.
- Never add fake persons as your friends:-There might be some people interested in knowing too much about you and if you share your details …they might misuse it or use it against you .Such people create fake accounts on social sites and might send you requests to join them …You should ignore such requests and if you’ve accepted one…remove him/her immediately.
- Never add your very personal Details online: - Sharing details like bank account numbers, mobile-phone number …etc through your online profiles should be avoided.As seen in the first few lines, hackers stole users data from the TrueCallers servers (mostly mobile numbers)...so ,do you think you should share your personal details online?
So , these were some common tips that are suggested by every security experts.If you've got any other tip/tips to share , kindly drop your tip as a comment.
