WhatsApp, Messenger and others. High -risk applications

The 24 -hour avalanche of notifications on the phone, applications that interact and the icing on the cake – one email address “to everything” cause that in practice we open the phone like a door at home, inviting everyone to enter and … looting.

Telephones in my head make a “pik” – this is how you can paraphrase one of the songs of the Republika team. “PiK” from WhatsAppa messages, “PiK” with a listed notification set, “PiK” at the banker forest and the “PiK” by e -mail – all this falls into one device, most often the phone, which we carry everywhere with us. It's convenient but also dangerous.

The application “does not talk” password?

Is it easy to jump from the hacked email to the banking application if we use them on one smartphone? It would be reasonable to close everything, including what works in the background on the smartphone, and then just log in to the bank account. Fortunately, this is not necessary, because in practice “jumping” between applications is not easy, even though they are turned on at the same time.

– Today, phones in their default configuration do not allow free access to data between applications. Such permissions must be given ourselves the selected application – explains Robert Grabowski, head of CERT Orange Polska. In practice, this means that, e.g. in the background, Facebook does not have access to the banking application or the slogan in the browser.

Does this mean that there are no malicious smartphones applications? “On the contrary,” adds the expert. – The best advice that can be given here is the installation of the application only from trusted stores (such as AppStore and Google Play). Google Password Manager (on Android phones) and Apple Keychain offer a very high level of security and can be used as password managers. However, we must always remember about a good slogan for our main account and additionally secure them with the second authentication factor (2FA) – tells.

Email address like home

The e -mail address is another gate that hackers can get to us. In the end, not only spam falls into it, but also news to Pseudolewandowski, which encourages investment in cryptocurrency or like-bank, suggesting a counterfeit page just to extort our data. There is another aspect that we often forget every day, and which we need when we fall into cybertarapts.

– Access to the email usually allows you to reset passwords to other websites, and by searching them, you can reach many sensitive data or use them to attack our friends – indicates the expert.

Therefore, it is good practice having at least two email accounts. One – most important – only for official, banking and company matters. The second – for the newsletters of fishing sites and funny from Facebook, with a word of interesting matters, which do not necessarily depend on the wealth of our portfolio.

In bright cases, if someone can not resist promotions on the net and click too many ads on social media, it is better to consider buying a separate phone, which we will configure with e -mail No. 2, which is the less significant.

The question is different: is this solution able to convince himself? I think it is practically unreal and will remain only in the world of utopian wishes and unrealized good advice – adds Robert Grabowski.

Wi-fi surprise, i.e. you never know what will happen

During the day, the smartphone connects with two or three different Wi-Fi networks on average, which we do not manage. This always raises concerns whether they have been secured in an appropriate manner. On vacation or departure there are also those offered by hotels and restaurants, less often hotspots.

In such a situation, the basis is the use of your “personal” internet, and thus, sharing it from the phone to our other devices. – Communication with the website, e.g. our bank, provided by the encrypted connection (HTTPS) will be secured identically in the Wi-Fi hotel chain. But this own connection will allow us to avoid, for example, the accidental acceptance of the Proxy server certificate or sharing our own files on the local network – describes the Orange cyber security expert.

An additional cybermura is the fact that most of the critical services (and here again it is worth citing, for example, banks) after a few to a few minutes of inactivity will automatically log us out. This will also happen when we throw them into the background. – what you should remember is the fact that The security of our computer or phone is as strong as access to it. Loggy will not be able to log in if you can log in again – says Robert Grabowski.

This proved, among others The head of the Chancellery of the Prime Minister during the rule of Mateusz Morawiecki Michał Dworczyk, whose correspondence sailed on the Telegram website. It is true that Belarusian or Russian services are unlikely to hack on our account (although in the face of the currently he waged hybrid war it is not completely excluded, but only unlikely), but it can become a nutrient for hackers who want to bring part of our property.

Messenger, Slack and WhatsApp, or sentence here, link there

Messengers are pushing their elbows, replacing, among others telephone conversations. Here is a family chat, a group chat for parents of students, between them the “work”, to which, thanks to the gods of the Internet, there is no HR department access, and right next to a gang of friends with whom you plan to travel. The multitude of groups, unfortunately, means that we are not always able to check exactly who is on the added list. Do we carefully remember the son of Aunt Hanka's cousin? Or maybe Maciek's mother, who joined the class only this school year?

The answer is simple: no. Even Trump's administration, discussing plans and then the results of the attack on the Huti group in Yemen, added a journalist to the group. Even at the highest levels of American US administration, they do not apply to the cardinal principle: caution, i.e.

• Do not click on suspicious links sent even by people we know on closed communities;
• We do not respond to unusual requests, e.g. about Blik;
• We do not provide important data to a group of friends (it is better to do it in a private message).

– Both the family group and individual huts on Signal or Whatsapp are fully encrypted. Photos will also be protected in the same way – says Robert Grabowski. Therefore, it will be safer, for example, to share the photo, using the messenger than to make it public on social media.

Who has not ever written a message not in this window or open an email probably sent by a friend (but without 100 % certainty), let him throw the smartphone first. However, it is worth sticking to a few rules that will significantly reduce the danger we can put up your phone on. Of course, apart from the standard type: password 12345.

Here are five immortal behaviors that will save our portfolio from the online Fortun hinders according to Robert Grabowski, head of Cert Orange Polska:

1. 2FA – Let's put on a second authentication factor.
2. Let's be careful in communication.
3. An important principle of “pause” – before you react, click, stop, think about a while.
4. Installations only from official stores.
5. Fact-checking, confirmation of sources, the principle of limited trust.

ed. aw

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