“Good morning sir, your former neighbor, retired ASP on the line; I’ve got a serious issue to discuss with you”. What serious issue could this be from a man old enough to be my dad? Upon entering my office he continued “someone has duped me to a tune of N200,000 and this was done via a Glo line”. “How did it happen?” I sought to know. “I have been having a Facebook chat with a white lady who sent a parcel over to me and in the process of trying to clear the said parcel from the port, a lot of issues arose and I later discovered it was all a set up to dupe me, at which point my N200, 000 had already been paid to an unknown account in Zenith Bank”. The funny thing is that he sounded as if he wasn’t the one who made the payment himself. We sat in my office and I could not imagine how a retired senior law enforcement officer became a prey to this kind of scheme.
Just recently, I got a new friend request on Facebook from a very close friend who is a clergy and I could not help but contact him immediately to be sure he was actually the one who sent the request, having been friends on Facebook already, it was then he admitted he was the one and started explaining how his Facebook account had been hacked by an unknown person forcing him to block the said account.
These issues, coupled with the recent messages of social media accounts being duplicated, forced me to caution us on how to safe-guard our social media accounts to avoid falling prey to 419ners and hackers. From my little survey, I have come to realize that a lot of people do not open their social media accounts themselves. Most people who own social media accounts are illiterates when it comes to the management of such accounts. People just get to phone shops, pick up smart phones and request for social media accounts to be created for them, most of whom do not even know the details of such accounts. The creation of such accounts is usually done by persons who belong to a league of cyber criminals who use such details to either clamp down on the owners or use such accounts disguising to be the owners and dupe others.
It is thus proper that you pay attention to the following as measures of safeguarding your social media account against cyber fraud:-
1. Ensure you create your social media account yourself: Pay and attend classes on how to use and manage the internet and social media. There is nothing too difficult there; a week is enough to have mastery on the use of the internet and management of any social media platform. This will cost you not more than N10,000. If you think education is expensive wait until you see what your ignorance will land you into.
2. Keep your logging details secure: A lot of people open social media accounts and forget their logging details, the reason you see one person owning numerous accounts on one social media platform. Use details you can easily remember, things that are close to you, your name, date of birth, your child or spouse’s name, I mean just anything you can easily remember. Apart from remembering, keep such details from the knowledge of others including your children, only your spouse should know your social media details. This will save you a lot of trouble in the future.
3. Maintain your identity on social media platforms: The kind of identity people use on social media is misrepresenting. Let me quickly mention to especially the youths who are still in school that employers are now very interested in your social media accounts. You can lose opportunity for job placement just because of your “mis-identity” on social media. Ensure your name is consistent and your activities are not found wanting in any way. Stop claiming what you are not, thinking you are deceiving people; you are simply deceiving yourself and might just land yourself in a very serious trouble.
4. Mind the kind of things you post for the consumption of the general public: A lot of people don’t know that social media posts are visible to the general public. Once you post something, almost all your friends/connections will see such posts and peradventure, if you tag some of your friends/connections on such posts, all the friends/connections of the tagged persons will also see those posts and probablyrelate such posts to those who are not even on such social media platform. Thus it is very easy for a post to spread on social media, making social media a very good avenue for advertisement. Some of us even post when we go to the bank to withdraw money, not knowing we are exposing ourselves to robbery attacks. In fact a lot of us get ourselves into trouble through our social media posts. Be careful about what you post on social media.
5. Be mindful of how you respond to links, SMS and emails: Some of us just click and respond to any link we see on the internet without making findings or respond to emails or SMS anyhow. All these can be in a bid to hack into our social media accounts. Very recently, there is this online link for “Atiku Grant Disbursement Program”. Millions have already filled this online form. For your information, the said form is fake and sorry to inform those of you who are fond of filling anything money on the internet that this will soon hunt you. Be careful what you do with your personal information.
6. Hide your contact on social media: Hide your phone number and email address from the general public. Let those that need them contact you personally to get them. Some of us usually put our phone numbers and email addresses in the public domain when people request for them, this is wrong. That is why there is inbox and private chat preference.
7. Stop using the same password for all your accounts: Some of us have just one password for all our internet accounts. This is unsafe as people can easily predict your password and use it against you.
In this present age of digitalization, it is very important we pay attention to anything that has to do with our internet accounts. Today all banks have mobile applications and a lot of people have keyed into them because of their simplicity in carrying out financial transactions, the use of the USSD code for financial transactions is another one and the chain goes on and on. If you toil with your smartphone or even “kpalasa” phone today, you are toiling with your fortunes. Don’t give your phone to anybody anyhow. A word, they say, is enough for the wise!