Page 26 - June 2017 Newsletter

Page cybersecurity and public Wi-Fi
More than 50 percent of all adults have their personal information exposed to hackers ev- ery year. One of the most common and serious threats to your personal and fi- nancial data occurs when you access free
tion. The list of risks goes on and on.
There is a saying in the cybersecurity industry that there
public Wi-Fi networks. If you have not used public Wi-Fi, you are one of the few who haven’t. Not only have the vast ma- jority of Americans accessed a free public
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Benefits Plan
are three types of people in the world: those who have been hacked, those who will be hacked and those who are being hacked right now and just don’t know it yet. Here are the most common ways hackers access
your device and private data:
• Fake Wi-Fi hot spots that look as real as the estab-
lishment.
“Man in middle” attacks that intercept 100 percent of the traffic of a legit Wi-Fi network. Now the hacker is on your device and can copy files and photos, access pass- words, log in to your accounts, steal financial informa- tion, drop malware and pretty much make your life mis- erable. Then they sell all your info.
Most “safe” and legit networks are encrypted, meaning that messages sent on the network are in a secret code that cannot be read during transmission. However, there is no way of knowing if the encryption software was in- stalled and is up to date.
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Wi-Fi network, but more than 75 percent have accessed their personal email when doing so.
During the 2016 Republican and Democratic national conventions, the IT security firm Avast set up fake Wi-Fi net- works, and around 70 percent of all attendees at both con- ventions accessed the networks and exposed their personal information.
Think about where you may be accessing Wi-Fi: super- markets, coffee shops, libraries, police districts, hotels, air- planes. The list is long, and the temptation is longer. It’s con- venient, you don’t use your costly and limited data, and in many cases, depending on your device settings, logging on to public Wi-Fi is automatic.
Here’s the big problem: With an estimated 95 percent of Wi-Fi data traffic being unencrypted and therefore exposed to easy hacking, public Wi-Fi networks have become the top breeding ground for hackers. And hackers aren’t there to snoop. At the least, you can compromise your personal information. But they are looking for access to your financial information, your passwords, your home address, your loca-
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So what should you do? The obvious answer: Don’t use any public Wi-Fi networks; however, there are more practical protections you should consider:
• Buy a personal “hot spot.” Not perfect, but much safer as you know the network you are using and its protections. • Never log in to password-protected websites that con- tain sensitive information when using a public Wi-Fi connection, such as banking and social networking sites, or even email. Facebook and Facebook Messen-
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