Archives - Security Best Practice


What is Shoulder Surfing?

In public areas malicious actors can simply glance over your shoulder as you type. By simply watching you, they can steal sensitive or personal information. Screen protectors which prevent shoulder-surfers from seeing your device screen can be purchased for little money. For smaller devices, such as phones, be cognizant of your surroundings while viewing sensitive […]

Avoid oversharing on the Internet

There is such a thing as too much information. Oversharing is more than simply annoying. When a criminal decides to target someone for an identity theft scheme, they sometimes begin their attack by simply researching the person’s social media accounts. If the intended victim doesn’t have privacy settings set up, or if they do but […]

Be careful with shortened links

Vanity link shorteners such as bit.ly and goo.gl were once popular as a space-saving techniques on platforms like Twitter. They carry risks, though, since you cannot immediately see where they lead. Truncated URLs have been used in several scams. For example, a goo.gl address was central to a phishing campaign that pointed victims to a […]

Beware of Public USB charging ports

Like public Wi-Fi, public USB ports in cafes and airports can’t be trusted. Connecting your device to one of them could result in a virus infection. Bring your own external battery pack, or find a standard wall socket instead.

Ignore installation prompts, particularly on Facebook

You might have tried viewing a video on Facebook or another social site, only to be prompted to download a special codec or plugin to actually watch it. These requests are almost always spurious, given the wide compatibility of video formats between browsers and operating systems. Basically, if you did not go looking for a […]

Hover over links before clicking them

Links can’t always be trusted to go where they say they do. To avoid falling into a trap, hover your mouse over a link you’re not sure of to see where it actually leads. If you’re on a mobile device, you can usually do a light tap and hold on a link to preview where […]