Given how many activities we carry
out on our devices, the regularity with which Internet fraud takes place should
come as no surprise. We shop on our computers, transfer funds by our
smartphones, keep sensitive personal information on our laptops, and we do all
of these things while having our devices connected to a data web that others
can access. If someone has not yet performed fraudulent activity using
information gleaned from your devices, you can be sure of this: in the future,
someone will try.
This is not to say that you should
eschew computers entirely, though. In today’s world, it is nearly impossible to
do without them. Even if you have already been stung by Internet fraud, you
should still not give up entirely on computers as there are things you can do
to safeguard yourself from further IT invasions. To that end, here is our guide
to securing your devices after an Internet fraud event.
Steps
to Keeping Your Gadgets Safe from Further Internet Fraud
1. Start by trying to identify which
gadget was affected. This may not be possible in all cases, of course, and if
you have all of your gadgets linked closely, you should simply assume that all
of them are now compromised.
Still, there are cases where you
know that only one device was affected—say if the Internet fraud was
perpetrated via malware that you accidentally installed after clicking a link
in a scammer’s email. Usually, only the machine you were using when you clicked
on the link has been affected, which means that you can forego the “sanitizing”
process for your other devices in order to save time.
2. Run an antivirus and malware
check on the concerned device. Note that you can do this for smartphones as
well as desktop computers. If the antivirus programme manages to identify the
offending software, you can simply quarantine or delete that programme for a
quick fix. If you want to be more thorough, though, you can move on to step 3.
3. If you are the type who wants
true security against Internet fraud, your best bet is a full system reinstallation
for the affected device or devices. This is time-consuming, but it can yield a
much more secure system afterwards.
What you have to do is create a
backup of your files and important programmes on a separate disk. Next, get a
copy of the installation files/disc for your preferred operating system. After
that, wipe the machine’s old system: format the computer’s hard drive, which
will delete all the data on it, and then reinstall the operating system on it.
Before restoring your old files and
programmes by copying them again to your computer, though, you want to install
an antivirus first and use it to scan your old files and programmes for
malware. From then on, you shall simply have to be more careful with your
device or devices than before. Turn off password remembrance options on your
browsers, use different passwords on devices as well as online accounts, and
never go without a malware and antivirus programme.
