Ready for 2025?
The past couple of years have come with advancements in AI that have proven helpful in some cases. However, in the hands of those with malicious intent, these tools make scams incredibly efficient. In the recent past, we could avoid implementing internet safety tactics by relying on odds. For instance, since there are around 2 billion or more gmail accounts, you may feel like it is a safe bet that your account won’t be hacked. Furthermore, you may feel as though the account is mostly for junk mail and does not contain anything important such as social security numbers or credit card numbers. While this may be true, unfortunately that isn’t enough to keep your personal and private information safe. Allow me to explain…
Would you use the same key for every car and house you own?
Without going too deep on specifics, multi factor authentication (MFA) is incredibly important these days. Statistics show that about 78% of people use the same password for everything. As a human, I completely understand this. As a human with a young child, a spouse, a full time job, and school, I understand it even more. There just isn’t enough storage space in our brains for a separate password for each thing, especially since just about everything forces you to have some kind of sign in these days. You legitimately cannot order a pizza without having an account on some websites, it is truly ridiculous. This is where MFA shines, it allows you to provide some kind of other form of identity to prove that you are you. This can be in the form of a token, using biometrics like face id or touch id, or other options. Additionally, password managers exist and can help you to store passwords so you don’t forget them and generate unique passwords for everything. In my opinion, password managers are nice but they present a security challenge of their own that we’ll save for another day.
What does this have to do with anything?
Back to the point… Since there is high liklihood that your gmail uses the same password as other accounts that you own, someone with access to your gmail can easily see emails from all the places that you have accounts. They now have the email and password to sign in at all of these places. Again, we mentioned this email is for junk so it’s likely you setup the pizza hut account with this email. A malicious actor can sign into pizza hut and order a pizza now :). Seriously though, the point is that maybe this gmail can lead the hacker to some account that has your bank details saved or maybe gives away the bank that you use. If the credentials work for the bank then your account will be dry in less than 10 minutes.
What’s the lesson here?
AI and computer advancements have made these kinds of slow and time consuming hacks quicker and easier. Less man power is required and many more attempts can take place, making the odds of getting compromised much higher. If nothing else, in 2025 to keep the family safe on the internet, ensure that you use MFA whenever you can. While this was a fun and simple example, there are many other complex ways for hackers to steal information these days, we can no longer afford to leave our internet safety to chance.
More to come on these topics. There’s a ton to discuss.