If you have your own website, you know how important it is to keep your website safe and secure from hackers, social engineering, domain thieves and spammers. Internet crimes are not like traditional crimes, it is much harder to catch and prosecute perpetrators and there are few laws to do so. The best thing you can do is prevent the culprits from being successful in the first place.
Domain Theft
One recent prevalent issue is the theft of domains otherwise known as domain hijacking. This is when a thief steals the name of your website by changing the name’s Whois registration information at the registrar level. The thief can access your name if you have a weak password, through phishing or spyware. This can be prevented by changing your password frequently, enabling domain locking and two factor authentication. Another popular way for thieves to steal your passwords and get access to your domain names, and other accounts is social engineering.
Social Engineering
Social engineering is when thieves call your bank, domain registrar or other business pretending to be you in order to gain access to your accounts. They use information found in social media profiles and other online sources such as date of birth, pet’s name, address, phone, and even mother’s maiden name. A way to protect yourself is to keep social media profiles private and not post any sensitive information. Also be careful that your security question answers are not comprised of any information that can be found online. A famous case of hosting related social engineering featured Twitter and a social hacker who used hijacked domains to blackmail the owner into giving it up.
Keep Wordpress Up To Date
If you use WordPress you should know that because of its popularity it is a frequent target for hackers. That is why it is imperative that you keep the software up to date along with your themes and plugins.
Keep Your Data Secure
Protect your website and your visitor’s data by using website security software to check for malware and fix any breaches. Also check your Google Search Console account which can let you know if it finds malicious code on your site. If you do business online or want to help your SEO rankings you may want to purchase an SSL certificate which lets your visitors know that your site and their data is safe.