The Pros And Cons Of Identity Hacking

Forget the 81 million dollar heist that was executed perfectly by burglars. Some 55 million records of Filipino voters’ personal data have been compromised. This is one of the biggest hacking incidents in terms of scale in recent memory and unlike earthly things that can be measured by money, this one’s priceless. Hackers have downloaded the comprehensive information of the voters from COMELEC's website illegally then published all of it on the internet.

Just to raise the awareness regarding this, creative minds of opportunist have all sorts of attack using our personal data that will result in their own personal gains and potential loss for the poor victims. Personal information stealing is always linked with identity theft. Imagine all the

Do not panic. Create a proper awareness drive. Instead of sharing emotions of disgust directing towards the irresponsible people, why not share how this incident has affected your life or people near you? This can give an idea to all the people around you and how these people can avoid from getting victimized too. We need to try and negate all the possible types of attacks to render them ineffective anymore, not to spread panic in our nation.

2. Your own birthdays and relatives’ name were also published online. Does it ring something? Yeah, cause these are used as security questions by several companies when verifying the identity of their customers from the other line. It would be smart for these companies to add another layer of protection to further strengthen their account ownership verification process and for you to suggest these changes to

With regards to your online accounts, changing your security question and choosing an information that's not included in the leaked data across all your online accounts will be useful. Security questions are often used when retrieving accounts information such as usernames and passwords. Avoid using security questions with answers related to your address, age, birthday, name of your relatives or anything formal and personal. Instead, you can use informal info like the first brand of car you possessed or the name of favorite pet which are not part of your compromised personal information. Aside from security questions, avoid using any personal info as your password in your online accounts. One of the popular personal information that's being used as a password is the birthday. Same goes with your ATM and Credit card passwords.

4. Be vigilant about your finances. Always check your account. Are there any dubious transactions recorded in any of your financial accounts? With the popularization of smartphones and free internet, you can now monitor your finances online. Should you get tangled in any of these dubious transactions, report this immediately to your bank and proper steps will be taken accordingly. Also, it would be helpful to ask your bank if there’s anything they can do to help you safeguard your finances. Asking them won’t charge you anything. So go ahead and call/visit your bank