Alright, so you’re one of the many people who’s a registered voter and your information has been leaked through a certain website made by hackers. Now that these kinds of information are being leaked throughout the internet, you might be a victim of identity theft. That said, here are some tips on how to protect yourself.
You might have noticed that various social media sites or even websites that ask for a registration are now advising you to use their two-factor authentication security feature. Please, do yourself a favor and use that. It’s a feature wherein you’ll be asked for a second confirmation code before you are able to login to your account, it may take a form of an email or an SMS confirmation. It doubles your security because even though hackers can determine your login credentials, they won’t be able to see your smartphone or access your email address.
When was the last time that you changed your password? Hackers have this way of using brute-force applications to try and access your accounts. This means that they will try every combination of alphanumeric characters until they find a way to get into your account. Sometimes the algorithm is that they use dictionary words first so be sure to avoid that. Make sure to add in a good combination of large and small characters, a bit of number and some more special characters — that way, it will take years before they can get a hit of your password combination.
After the COMELEC voter’s information has been leaked, people can now know your basic information such as address, age, and birth date. With that kind of information in hand, they can try and guess your security questions wherein that kind of questions will be asked when you forgot your password. So be careful and avoid setting those as security questions.
Of course, they can just create a new account with all your information listed in Facebook and won’t even notice that they are already sending friend requests to your friends. The best way to counter that is to change your privacy settings and limit it to your friends and family. That way, those bogus accounts won’t have additional information to make them more legit.
