How safe is your web space?

We all have personal and private information in social media platforms, which can be a  Facebook profile, Twitter or Instagram. Social media platforms helped lots of people to interact better with their friends and families (Roebuck, Siha & Bell 2013). YouTube and Snapchat have played an important part in our lives, by facilitating our communication through a range of different people from different cultures and background. However, have you ever asked yourself about your online information which could be at risk? Do you know that your online photos, emails and accounts might be at risk of hackers? It’s very important to know and understand what might be the risk of storing our private information online and how to protect yourself from the cybercrime.

Personally, I like to travel all around the world, from Europe to Asia, then back to Australia. Connecting to the internet sometimes can be hard overseas, I used to go to the nearest coffee shop and jump into their free internet to keep myself active on social media. Unfortunately, being active on social media was inconvenient, which has triggered security concerns over my private information. Some of my horror stories with hackers were: personal identity been stolen, charges were taken from my credit card for items been purchased from online places which I have never been and money was stolen from my bank account. To be safe on the web space away from the hackers, simple tips have been followed to protect your privacy: Creating a weak password can be easy to breach by the hackers. Passwords should include special characters such as; capital letters and symbols (Garfinkel & Spafford 2002). Some of the social media platforms give you the opportunity to restrict access from family member or friend as well as blocking messages from strangers, to protect your personal information on the web space. Antivirus is another security guard for your devices, to protect your accounts from been hacked.

ACIC (Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission) has considered Australia as an easy target for Cybercrime due to the wealth of our nation and the high use of social media. According to the ACIC, Australia has been losing $1 billion annually because of the cybercrime (ACIC 2019). Apart from losing money, cybercrime which includes hackers, have caused more damage to our personal identity as well as a huge impact on our psychological and emotional wellbeing. ACSC, the Australian Cyber Security Centre, has advised some easy steps on her government website to protect people’s private information and accounts. Some of the steps are: in order to secure your email and social media, make sure that you use a strong password of at least 13 characters and a different password for each account. Carefully avoid the phishing attack, which can access your private information through your email, SMS or your social media accounts (ACSC 2019). Phishing can be through a scam email, ACSC advised not to use the scam link to enter your username and passwords. Another advice was not to connect your devices to the public Wi-Fi without a VPN (Virtual Private Network).  

Reference:

Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission 2019, Cybercrime, viewed 15 July 2019, <https://www.acic.gov.au/about-crime/organised-crime-groups/cybercrime>.

Australian Cyber Security Centre 2019, Easy steps to secure your online information, viewed 13 July 2019, < https://www.cyber.gov.au/advice/easystepsguide>.

Bell, R. L., Roebuck, D., Siha, S. 2013, ‘Faculty Usage of Social Media and Mobile Devices: Analysis of Advantages and Concerns’, Interdisciplinary Journal of E-Learning and Learning Objects, Volume 9, 171-192.

Garfinkel, S, Spafford 2002, G 2013, Web Security, Privacy & Commerce, Privacy-Protecting Techniques, O’Reilly, Cambridge, pp. 230-256.