When it comes to online scams, nothing is ever completely fool proof, however there are some basic steps to take in protecting your online presence, says Monmouth’s Director of Information Technology Ken Helms:
“One of the major things that you can always do on your social media and just a number of different online accounts is that there is usually an option for something they call two-factor authentication that really greatly secures your account. What two-factor is, is you enable it somewhere in the settings, depending on what website you are on, and then when you log in to those websites, it will send a text message to your phone or to an email or another different type, just basically a second type with a code, then you enter that in, and then log in. That helps protect quite a bit against spammers getting ahold of your password, different things like that, and getting access to the account.”
Helms states another way to help protect against online scammers, is to always keep an email address that is separate for websites you are register for, that way if hackers were to do a password reset, you always have a second email to recover an account.
**Written by WMOI/WRAM Director of Communications Kelsey Crain**