It’s mid day Saturday here, beautiful and nice out today so I decide to write something trivial about online hijacking and all that crazy stuff that can happen to any of us in the world. You will be wondering why someone in the human race would act to make life miserable for another, but hey, this is the world we live in. It’s full of good and bad. Evil minded crazies and some really cool, intelligent, God fearing, loving, sexy, philanthropic people as well. You hardly know who is who. Remember Bob Marley’s song,” Man to man is so unjust”. Part of that song goes, your best friend could be your worst enemy. Some will eat and drink with you, but behind your back, they will be talking about you or planning to hurt you or eliminate you all together from this world.There are people who live their entire life planning to destroy others happiness or life, all together. The only option is to be vigilant. This is true in every situation in life. You must always be vigilant or else, you’ll smell pepper lol. Why am I talking about online fraud when l should be sun bathing somewhere in the Bahamas? lol. Well, l was tricked this morning and if l had not been a little smarter than a 5th grader, I would have totally given access to one of my financial accounts online. I do not want to specifically point out which system l was targeted but l’ll make a general case of how to be alert when it comes to online activities. For most of us, when we receive emails that carry the name of one of the big companies we already know, we are likely to read and follow instructions in them, without double checking. But this is not good, don’t be fooled by company logo or copy right information in an email to convince you to easily give access to your information in reply to the email. Always double check with the main company if something is fishy about the email. For example, l received an email one day that said my paypal account has been compromised so l need to restore my account using a link in the email by answering some specific questions about my paypal account. The email said my account is now locked and can not be accessed until l resolve the problem. This email has all paypal logos and exactly resembles regular notifications l get from paypal. So l click on the link, because l’m a little bit concerned, l did what most people won’t do. l looked at the URL the shows up in the address bar. It said something weird. I knew all of a sudden something must be going wrong. l exited that website and open my paypal account and submitted my information and l logged in successfully. There was no notification in my paypal account about any problem with my account. It was then that l realized I acted smarter than whoever wanted to collect my paypal information by sending me that link so, when I try to restore my account as they claimed, they will use the information l provide to access my paypal account. This is an example of how nice online thieves can get you. These people are smarter than most of us and have come up with many ways to make you their prey, so if you do not take second look at things, you will be easily hijacked. Most of us are now using social media to connect and share information with our friends, family and the world as a whole. Most often, you will see some funny things posted on your feed or wall. Don’t take chances, if you suspect something wrong, you are better off changing your password than having some weird person use your account to promote their crazy stuff. If l have my way, all online services will request a password change for account after sometime for security reasons. To conclude, here are things to look for when it comes to online fraud. Emails or notifications of the form, you won lottery send your information, the FBI needs to verify your information, your financial company will like to confirm your information, you are the winner of this and that click here to confirm. The list goes on, just be careful and stay alert when it comes to online accounts.
