Google Account Security Senior Director Mark Risher how to protect yourself from online scammers during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to him, people began to use web services more often than usual, which prompted attackers to come up with new ways to deceive them. In the past two weeks, Google has been detecting 240 million phishing emails every day, with the help of which cybercriminals try to steal users' personal data.
In 2020, the majority of phishing emails are purporting to be from charities and hospital staff fighting COVID-19. In this way, scammers try to inspire trust and encourage people to go to a site asking them to enter personal data such as their address of residence and payment information.
Gmail's machine learning technology blocks 99,9% of potentially harmful messages. If a phishing email does reach users, the technology built into the Google Chrome browser makes it harder to follow malicious links. In addition, the company checks the security of applications on Google Play before they are installed by users. Despite all this, Mark Risher advised users not to lose vigilance and follow a few simple rules.
First of all, a Google employee recommends being careful with emails related to the COVID-19 coronavirus. Users should be wary if they are asked to share their home address or bank details. If there are links in the email, it is important to examine their URL. If it should lead to the site of a large organization like the WHO, but there are extra characters in the address, the site is clearly a fraudulent one.
Mark Risher also reminded that corporate mail cannot be used for personal purposes. Otherwise, users can endanger not only their personal information, but also the organization's confidential data. If corporate mail does not have two-factor authentication and other protective measures against intruders, it is necessary to report this to full-time IT specialists.
While working remotely, it is important to keep group calls secure. In Google Meet, it's important to password protect rooms, and when you send a link to a hangout, you can activate the "on demand" function. Thanks to her, the creator of the conversation can independently decide which users can participate in the conference, and which are better to leave. If the user has received an invitation to a video meeting, but this requires installing the application, you need to download it only from official sources like Google Play.
Many users are accustomed to the fact that the installation of security updates on a work computer is usually handled by full-time IT specialists. When working from home using your own computer or laptop, you need to install security updates yourself. Timely installation will prevent intruders from attacking your computer using discovered security holes.
Always, not only during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to protect accounts with different and complex passwords. To memorize complex combinations of letters, numbers and symbols, you can use . You can create a hard-to-guess password using password generators.
Each user is also recommended to run Google account. If problems are detected, the system itself will show which account settings need to be changed to increase the level of protection. In addition, all users need to configure , and if you want to get maximum protection, join the program .
Since schools are currently closed, children spend a lot of time on the Internet. To teach them how to be safe, you can use Be Internet Awesome () or an interactive game . If desired, you can control the activities of children on the Internet through the application .
Not only Google, but also other companies are concerned about user safety. Recently, Zoom developers updated their video calling service to version 5.0. In it, they seriously worked on increasing the level of protection of user data, which can be read in .
Source: 3dnews.ru