....this is not my usual style of blog, I’m writing this in the hope it might prevent others from the same experience...
Yeah, yeah it’ll never happen to me! That was my naive non digital native thinking, Firstly, from a business perspective it’s secure I’d had support setting it up from a professional 😅
However, personally I was blissfully wondering along all the while unaware that my digital door was wide open. How did this happen? 17 years ago, I had set up my first NZ email account, this legacy account was used to deal with “life admin” and set up social media - all my connections with family and friends. Over the years it had just been doing it’s “thing” until a recent overseas trip and an innocent connection to what I thought was a secured hotel Wi-Fi had started the stack of dominos to fall!
My email account and social media had been taken over and I began to receive threats and bribes, upsetting, scary and left me feeling powerless. I’ve lost all history and contacts, was terrified at the thought of what financial and personal access could be available and forced to delete my Facebook/messenger accounts (FYI it takes 30days to disappear completely which is frustrating) having jumped on this quickly it has resulted in (I’ll admit a few tears) days updating, retrieving and migrating personal information, and hopefully nothing more than a serious slap on the shoulder as apposed to long term collateral damage.
So, here are a few “layperson” learnings in the hope that others can prevent this: To some of you these may be obvious, but talking to people recently – I also know this is not actually the common knowledge we assume it is:
1. Take privacy updates seriously, read them use them and regularly update as a result
2. Always set up 2 factor verification on everything! (not using the same email address)
3. Have different passwords and change them regularly, I know we are creatures of habit and want to keep things simple – but, trust me it opens the door, so please make them complicated with different symbols, numbers and caps etc.
4. When asked for verification questions eg mothers maiden name – make them as complicated as your password
5. Double check your urls eg if it says HTTP it is not as secure as HTTPS
(points 6&7 are what I have been told by IT professionals)
6. For personal use Gmail is better than a lot of web systems (in particularly old legacy systems like I had)
7. WhatsApp apparently is more secure than messenger
8. When travelling overseas try to avoid using the inhouse “secure wifi”, having a VPN will help with protection (VPN stands for "Virtual Private Network" and describes the opportunity to establish a protected network connection when using public networks)
9. If in doubt seek IT /security professional help
From a personal perspective, I often work with my clients on the importance of psychological safety and this incident has demonstrated to me how important and fragile this is in all aspects of life – going through this experience has left me feeling vulnerable and isolated, our reliance on tech is huge and I now feel nervous and unsafe with it, I still can’t reach out to all my connections and when I do, the turst others have in my new profile is understandably wobbly – as with psychological safety it takes time to build up and is very easily lost, and even when it is rebuilt things may never be quite the same.
Take care of your digital footprint in the same way you should your real-life connection with others – they’re both important, with each you should look to build confidence over time as they are an integral part of who we are and how we show up.