Have you secured yourself, once you have found that you had been hacked?
By: Ole Brockhuus
Tags: Cybersecurity, Hacker, Cybercrime, Surveys

Last week I wrote about the survey we carried out on almost 500 SpotTheSpy clients. We asked them if they reported to the police after a hacker attack. As you know, almost 60% of respondents denied.

SpotTheSpy: 41% of the respondents admitted that they had not secured their accounts properly

This was not the only question we asked the victims of cyber crime. Today I would like to share with another results. We asked our customers: Have you successfully secured your internet accounts, once you have found that you had been hacked? I think it’s even more important than the previous one.

Unfortunately, as much as 41% of the respondents admitted that they had not secured their accounts properly or that they couldn’t tell for sure. Let’s get into details. One in three internet users declared that they were not sure whether the measures they had taken were successful and almost one in ten concluded that the actions taken were unsuccessful.

In the case of users who just suspect that they have been hacked in the past, the issue with securing the account is even bigger. Only every fourth user stated that they managed to secure their profiles on the internet. At the same time, half of the respondents were not so sure about it, while every fourth of them declared that they did not know how to do it.

While the results may seem fairly easy to guess, the reasons behind may be quite puzzling. Users who declared that they failed to secure their accounts explained that they: (I) did not know how to do it, (II) did not have enough funds, (III) stated that their security attempts were pointless.

As for me, who runs cyber security business, it is thought-provoking. As a significant part of society thinks that begin secured in the internet is too expensive and too complicated, how easy and cheap the service should be, to help 41% of us?

As this is not an easy question, in the meantime, let’s look at the basic steps we can make after begin attacked. Free of charge.

Step 1. Password change

What you should do in the first place — if possible — is to change your password, you use to login to your account. Ideally, you should choose a good, strong password including capital and lowercase letters, as well as special characters and digits. You should not use passwords which you have already used in other places. If possible, you should do it on a different computer than the one you normally use — as it may be infected with malware.

Step 2. Logging out from other sessions

Some social media, like Facebook, for example, allow you to open multiple sessions on different devices. Thus, you may simultaneously use Facebook, both on your computer and smartphone. Facebook also allows you to get insight into active sessions. You can see which devices and the location from which they are currently logged in to your account, and consequently logout of them. You may also do it on your phone, using the SpotTheSpy application.

Step 3. Two-step authorisation

Currently, most social media and email accounts offer you the possibility to increase the security level by means of additional authorisation, e.g. by sending a text message to your phone the moment you login or by linking a token-generating application. If you have not yet used this option, do it straight away, regardless whether your account had been already hacked or it would happen in the future.

Step 4. Verify your data and activity

Check in the first place, whether the person who has logged in to your account, has not changed your data and password reset method (e.g., an email which is used to reset your password). This trick could help the criminal reset your password and login to your account once again. Secondly, check the activity on your account. Especially, whether there have been any emails sent to your friends requesting them to lend you some money or including a link to a malicious website infecting you with malware. Check also your likes, comments and friends as well as messages sent from your email account.

Keep safe!