By National Cyber Security Centre
Social media is a great way to promote your charity, stay in touch with family and friends, and keep up to date on the latest news. However, it’s important to know how to manage the security and privacy settings on your accounts, so that your private business & personal information remains inaccessible to anyone but you.
Understanding your digital footprint
You should think about your digital footprint, which is a term used to describe the entirety of information that you post online, including photos and status updates. Criminals can use this publicly available information to steal your identity, or use it to make phishing messages more convincing.
Whether you access the internet using a mobile phone, tablet or laptop, each time you go online or use a digital service, you’re leaving a trail of information behind you.
What you can do
Think about what you put online – do you need to share this information? If you do (or if you just want to) then who do you want to share it with? Keeping personal information offline, or restricted to people you know well, will reduce the chances of it being used to impersonate you, or even to figure out your passwords.
As an extra layer of protection, use 2-step verification (often shortened to 2SV and sometimes called two-factor authentication). This provides a way of ‘double checking’ that you really are the person you are claiming to be when you’re using online services, such as social media, banking or email. Even if a criminal (or someone simply looking to cause mischief) knows your password, they won’t be able to access any of your accounts that are protected using 2SV.
CPNI’s Digital Footprint Campaign, contains a range of useful materials (including posters and booklets) to help understand the impact of your digital footprint.
Recovering a hacked account
How to tell if you’ve been hacked:
Steps to take if your account has been hacked:
Find out more by visiting the Recovering a hacked account webpage or downloading the Recovering a hacked account PDF.
This article was taken from the National Cyber Security Centre’s Small Organisations Newsletter. Subscribe to their newsletter here.