How to Avoid All These Problems
There are actually many ways to avoid getting hacked or scammed without too much trouble or effort, but here are some general recommendations:
- First, stop giving your email address away too easily. Whether it’s online or in real life, try to give your address to only people you know can be trusted. If you want to take it to the next level, you can also use different email addresses for different platforms. That way, your private email address will be safe, and you can tell people your public email address without worrying too much.
- Strengthen your passwords. Use different passwords for different online platforms, and try to make them as complicated as possible. Try using upper case, lower case numbers, and symbols in your passwords. I know it can be hard to remember longer passwords, but there are some great password managers that will keep all your passwords secured in one place — and some of them even help you use random email addresses too.
- Do you want to be more secure? Start using two-factor authentication. It’d be best if you set it up to receive your code on your personal phone, so no one but you will have access to it, but avoid using SMS if you can, as that’s vulnerable to a SIM-swapping attack. Use an authenticator app that generates the codes on your device, or better yet, consider a physical security key for your really sensitive accounts. Popular email services like Gmail and Fastmail not only offer support for these affordable security tokens, but they’ll even work with your iPhone and iPad.
- Last but not least, avoid shady websites. Sometimes, one click is all it takes for someone to get your email address and password on one of those sites.
While there’s no perfect way to completely protect yourself against cybercriminals, the above steps will help. They may always find new ways to try to attack people, but that doesn’t mean you should make it easier for them.