Wisconsin's Weekend Morning News
WWMN Interview: Michelle Reinen from DATCP shares tips for Internet Safety Month 6-30-24
Well, June is Internet Safety Month, and it is essential to our daily lives, but it can also change your life and not in a good way. Joining us on our Tri-County Contracting Hotline is Michelle Reinen, and Michelle, you see this every single day at your offices at DadCap. Absolutely, and you hear us talk about it all the time, but we can all use a refresher course on Internet Safety, and we can all shore up our bad habits as well and remember some things so we are as safe as possible, and we're taking this June Internet Safety Month to do that. We want you to remember the latest tips on how to keep yourself safe and your privacy protected because it's so important in our everyday lives. And one of the first steps is remembering there are a gazillion imposter websites out there. Cameras create these copycat websites that look nearly identical to real company sales platforms because they're finding them to be successful in obtaining your personal information, including that credit card number, and in many cases, your login information to those copycatted websites like an Amazon or a Walmart. So what are some of the other things that we need to be aware of in order not to get taken advantage of? Social media privacy, something as simple as a photo of your home or apartment building can be enough to identify your location. A post about an upcoming vacation can indicate an opportunity to steal from you because they know you're going to be gone and now they know where you live, or a video of you speaking can be used to copy your voice using artificial intelligence, and that can be used to convince a family member that you are in need of help and have money wired. So try and keep your social media privacy intact, know who you are giving access to, and don't post everything in your profile, especially if that is public. And then remember that there are account takeovers. Email and social media accounts can be taken over by scammers and used to trick other people into in that individual's network. So the process usually starts with a phishing scam. And so don't click on those links from those emails because they're trying to get at your information through those phishing scams where they will then take over your account and can impact all your friends and family in your profile. So let me get this straight. If you click on to one of those links, that could sometimes open the door where these scammers can just immediately get into your account. They're going to get your information to get into your account. So if you click that link and now engage in that information, that is one way that they can get it. Now the other way is if it is mailware behind that link. And so now they have access to your computer and can be logging all your information. So those phishing attacks are incredibly dangerous and we need people to recognize them and not click on them or even try and hover over them and try and outsmart them. Just delete those phishing attacks. All right. And then as far as passwords are concerned, how important is it to have those really secure? Oh, it's so important because you don't want scammers to gain access to one of your accounts because often that means they're going to gain access to multiple accounts because we're probably all guilty of using the same password on at least two different accounts and that gives them access to that information. So use different passwords for all your online accounts. Passwords should be long and memorable to you but difficult to guess. And really if that's hard for you, use a password manager program to assist you. But more than a password, try and use a passphrase, something long and complicated. And have that deadbolt to your front door, if you will, by using two-factor authentication to make it even more difficult for these scammers to gain access to your information because you will have your password and you will need that other token from that two-factor authentication in order to gain access to your account. And Michelle, if you've got questions about how to protect yourself in terms of internet security or if you have a report of a scam, who do we call? Please call the Consumer Protection Hotline at 1-800-422-7128.