The State of Idaho website, Idaho.gov, recently shared the following checklist to help individuals be proactive in avoiding a personal data breach.
- Reset your password now. Change your password for any compromised accounts. Go ahead and do it now, we’ll wait here for you. Now that that’s out of the way, you should consider enabling multi-factor authentication. With multi-factor authentication in place, even if cybercriminals steal your login credentials, they still won’t be able to access your account without at least one other authentication mechanism, like your phone for example.
- Monitor your credit accounts. Look for any suspicious activity. Remember you get a free credit report, one from each of the three major credit bureaus, every year at annualcreditreport.com. This is the only U.S. Federal Trade Commission-authorized site for obtaining free credit reports.
- Consider freezing your credit. A credit freeze makes it harder to open up a line of credit under your name by restricting access to your credit report. You can lift or stop the freeze at any time. The only hassle is that you must contact each credit bureau individually to enact or remove a freeze.
- Watch your inbox carefully. Opportunistic cybercriminals know that millions of victims of any given data breach are expecting some kind of communication regarding hacked accounts. These scammers will take the opportunity to send out phishing emails spoofed to look like they’re coming from those hacked accounts in an attempt to get you to give up personal information.
Learn more about data breaches
Contact Mike Wilson at michaelwilson1@cwi.edu or 208.562.3193 with questions or for more information, and stay tuned for more tips and information on cybersecurity awareness in future issues of Bert’s Alerts.