Three ways to protect yourself from hacking
Every day we hear about new hacks, or the possibility of hacks, with WiFi-connected cars, Smart TVs, baby monitors and webcams. Here are three simple things you can do now to protect your privacy, stop your car from being stolen and remember those crucial passwords.
1) Use a piece of tape on your webcam to protect yourself from secret recordings
If hackers can gain access to your system, it is an easy step to turn on your webcam. With the webcam on, they can easily see what you are doing and record what you are saying.
Whilst thorough software security measures are vital, a simple post-it note or plaster over the lens adds a little bit of extra comfort.
2) Park your car in the garage to thwart key cloners
If your keyless-entry fob is near your car, say on your desk, sophisticated burglars can use electronic signal-amplifier devices from 30 metres away to unlock your car while it’s parked in the driveway and maybe even drive off with it.
To prevent your car being stolen you could make sure you always store your key in a metal box or simply try our low-tech solution, lock the car in your garage.
3) Diarise your passwords
Ever get annoyed by having to choose a password with capitals, numbers, special characters and other seemingly random digits? This makes them really secure but also really hard to remember.
As the date format (Monday14:15) meets most of the required password criteria you can use your diary to remember passwords. Writing them in a coded way is a low-key way of remembering them.
Simply write your password hints as a list of events. If you know you always go to the theatre on a Saturday evening, write ‘Theatre’ as your hint and you know your password is Saturday19:30.
Anyone wanting to know more about hacking can study it as part of a Cyber Security course at CU Scarborough or CU London.