Unauthorized purchases. An erased computer. A hacked bank account. These are all potential risks for people who don’t protect their digital identity. Anyone is vulnerable to these risks, but those who practice digital identity safety have a lower chance of it happening to them.
To help inform students, faculty and staff about how they can protect themselves online, Kent State University’s Division of Information Technology offers a Protecting Your Digital Identity course. This course is designed to explain ways you can protect your privacy online and how to prevent someone from stealing your identity.
Thomas Mahon, information technology manager, is the instructor for this course. Mahon offered three tips that Kent State community members can use to help keep them safe online.
Watch Out for Phishing
Mahon’s first tip is to not click on suspicious messages. This nefarious tactic is known as phishing.
“Phishing is any attack that pretends to come from a reputable source, but it is obviously not,” Mahon said. “It’s any kind of trusted source that obviously is being leveraged for the purpose of being disingenuous.”
Students and employees should be cautious when clicking on suspicious links or opening attachments from emails or messages from someone they do not know or in a manner that seems unusual. Always check to be sure the email address or phone number is really from that person rather than just having their name on it.
No Copycats
Mahon’s second tip is to not reuse passwords, especially the password for your FlashLine account.
“Your university account has a lot of financial information and a lot of personal information in it that bad guys can use to then change banks and passwords on an account,” Mahon said.
By reusing passwords, users place themselves at a higher risk. If a cybercriminal gets access to one password for one site, they may try it on all sites they suspect you have accounts.
To reduce the risk of cybercriminals accessing this information, don’t reuse your FlashLine account passwords with other accounts.
Enable Multifactor Authentication
Mahon’s third tip is to enable multifactor authentication on all accounts that offer it. Mahon’s describes multifactor authentication as “a multistep account login process that requires users to enter more information than just a password to gain access to an account.”
Multifactor authentication is available for Google, Facebook, Instagram, banks and many more account types. Mahon advises that if the account offers multifactor authentication to take the extra step and use it.
Though this advice can sometimes seem boring, it is important for students and all users to practice.
“A lot of these things kind of feel esoteric, right, like, who cares?” Mahon said. “But key data like ‘What are the last four digits of your social security number? What is your current address? What is your current cell phone number? What’s a good email for you?’ All that information is held in a student’s FlashLine account and is the kind of data a cybercriminal needs to pretend to be a student to convince a bank or a credit card company to change a password,” Mahon said.
By following these safety tips, students, faculty and staff can protect their digital identity and keep their confidential information secure from cybercriminals.
Want to learn more about protecting your identity online? IT is offering another Protecting Your Digital Identity online course at 2:15 p.m. on Oct. 24.
Visit Training.Kent.Edu to register or to see all courses offered
Learn more about the Division of Information Technology.
Top photo credit: Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay