Introduction to Personal Technology Security

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We live in such wonderful times.  More and more people are exposed to technology that, years ago, were too expensive a few years ago.  Information is now available to a lot more people thanks to the high adoption rate of smartphones, tablets and laptops.  Students never had it so good because I still remember having to commute to different libraries in order to write research papers. People who need to do banking can do a lot of financial transactions simply by downloading and using the mobile banking applications of their respective banks.  Mobile payment platforms are slowly replacing the need to carry cash in order to pay for their groceries, medicines, monthly bills etc.

Blogger, Cellphone, Office, Business, Notebook

However, with all these conveniences, comes danger.  Hackers and fraudsters are taking advantage of this to take advantage of people who are not-too-savvy with technology to steal information and even money.  Text messages purporting to come from government agencies, dubious foundations even famous people are being received by millions of celfohne users.  These messages often say that the recipient won a "raffle draw" or his phone number has been randomly selected for a prize and they need to contact certain persons to claim the prize.  Once the recipient/target responds, the fraudster will try to get their personal information and then ask them to send virtual money (in the form of celfone load or direct transfer to an account) and once this is done, the contact person disappears together with the victm's money. Similar things happen to those who use social media and email.

I will discuss the dangers and implications of dealing with fraudsters in future posts.  Hopefully I can make this a series that will tackle personal information security that will be useful for "Every Juan". ;)

Location: Santa Rosa, Laguna, Philippines

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