HOW TO PROTECT YOUR IDENTITY AND PRIVACY IN THE DIGITAL WORLD

By Vonny Gamot, Head of EMEA at online protection company, McAfee

• Asking you to click on a link – this would usually be a request to update your personal information or log in to your account to access a bonus, reward, or refund – such as the Tesco Clubcard scam offering the chance to buy smartphones at knockdown prices.

As we get older, we stand to lose more to online fraud than any other age group. The true scale, however, is hard to nail down as research shows that many victims are too embarrassed to report it, even though it can, and does, happen to anyone. According to Action Fraud, older victims lost almost £1 billion between April 2019 and 2022. Even if this isn’t the full extent, it makes a strong case for ensuring that, if you are online, you are taking the best steps to keep your identity and privacy safe.

So, where do you start? Knowing what threats are out there is a good first step. In McAfee’s latest Consumer Mobile Threat Report, our researchers uncovered various trends, including malicious apps being the key threat to watch out for this year. Other scams include texts or emails from bad actors impersonating wellknown brands or even someone you know, to try and lure you into providing personal details. You should watch out for:

• Unexpected contact – even if appears to be from a legitimate organisation or a family member, like the ‘Hi Mum’ WhatsApp scam where fraudsters target parents by pretending to be their children and asking them to send money to help them out in emergencies.

• Urgent or threatening language –cybercriminals will use this to pressure you into acting quickly, such as a warning that your account will be closed if you don’t provide your personal information.

‘Pig butchering’ is another increasingly prevalent threat, highlighted by our researchers. ‘Pig butchering’ is any messaging scam where criminals ‘fatten up’ the victim before stealing their money. These schemes often start with a simple ‘Hi’ or ‘it was fun hanging out last week’ message that triggers a ‘sorry, wrong number’ response. The scammer then acts as if they have found a new friend and starts a conversation to build trust with the target, encouraging them to make small investments through the scammer, which get bigger and bigger over time as confidence grows. The best advice to stay clear of these scams is to be very sceptical about any get-rich-quick schemes or unsolicited investment opportunities. If things sound too good to be true, they usually are!

Here are my seven essential tips to stay safe online:

1 Consider another layer of protection.

Parental controls cover every age and stage of a family’s digital life. As an older adult who loves exploring online but hates bumping into inappropriate content, parental controls will help you keep the fun and block the junk. Perhaps you are a caregiver to someone older and notice them struggling with online shopping limits, keeping personal information private on social media, or even sharing fake news, then parental controls can help by blocking tempting sites. Filtering software also keeps your devices clean and protected from viruses and malware.

2 Update and store your passwords. Updating your passwords regularly is an online privacy gamechanger. The only problem? It’s tough to remember all those passwords, so who wants to risk changing them, right? Consider a password manager which many software packages have built in.Your password manager stores then populates the username and password fields every time you log on to a favourite site or app. Better yet, it makes changing your password an easy task since you don’t need to do any remembering.