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DP33 Businesses are also Bad With Security
With so much information being passed around in this day and age it’s easy for things to fall through the cracks. Because of this so many people are affected by all kinds of epidemics. Information breaches, hacks, stolen identities, and more.
These events are partly our fault for not being up to date with security. From easy to crack passwords to using the same password on several sites. But it’s not always our fault. Sometimes it’s pointed at the business who gathered our information in the first place.
And some of these companies are massive multi-million dollar businesses. Take one case of a man who’s entire digital life was destroyed in the span of an hour. His Google account was taken over before it was deleted. Next was his Twitter account. Then his AppleID account was broken into and all of the data on his MacBook, iPad, and iPhone was erased.
How could this all happen? Similar to how we may use the same password on multiple sites, companies have similar common practices.
For the case of this man, how the hacker got his AppleID account (and eventually Gmail, then Twitter) was by getting into Amazon.
Whenever you order from Amazon, a partial amount of numbers are shown for your credit card. Even though the hacker didn’t get the entire number of this man’s credit card, those digits are the same digits that are used for Apple to release information.
Essentially those four digits that Amazon considers as unimportant to display are the same numbers that Apple uses to perform an identity verification and giving you access to AppleID, iCloud, and more.
What’s saddening about this is some of this could’ve been salvaged. If the man backed up his computer regularly, he could rebuild his life easily. If he had two-factor authentication on his Gmail account he could’ve protected his Twitter account and any other social media site he was on.
What this teaches us is to be careful about our security. We can take certain measures to protect ourselves, but they can only go so far. One other step we ought to take is to push companies for tighter security measures. After all, since we are entering an era of cloud computing and multiple connected devices, this scenario can be more frequent for the foreseeable future.
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By dpappWith so much information being passed around in this day and age it’s easy for things to fall through the cracks. Because of this so many people are affected by all kinds of epidemics. Information breaches, hacks, stolen identities, and more.
These events are partly our fault for not being up to date with security. From easy to crack passwords to using the same password on several sites. But it’s not always our fault. Sometimes it’s pointed at the business who gathered our information in the first place.
And some of these companies are massive multi-million dollar businesses. Take one case of a man who’s entire digital life was destroyed in the span of an hour. His Google account was taken over before it was deleted. Next was his Twitter account. Then his AppleID account was broken into and all of the data on his MacBook, iPad, and iPhone was erased.
How could this all happen? Similar to how we may use the same password on multiple sites, companies have similar common practices.
For the case of this man, how the hacker got his AppleID account (and eventually Gmail, then Twitter) was by getting into Amazon.
Whenever you order from Amazon, a partial amount of numbers are shown for your credit card. Even though the hacker didn’t get the entire number of this man’s credit card, those digits are the same digits that are used for Apple to release information.
Essentially those four digits that Amazon considers as unimportant to display are the same numbers that Apple uses to perform an identity verification and giving you access to AppleID, iCloud, and more.
What’s saddening about this is some of this could’ve been salvaged. If the man backed up his computer regularly, he could rebuild his life easily. If he had two-factor authentication on his Gmail account he could’ve protected his Twitter account and any other social media site he was on.
What this teaches us is to be careful about our security. We can take certain measures to protect ourselves, but they can only go so far. One other step we ought to take is to push companies for tighter security measures. After all, since we are entering an era of cloud computing and multiple connected devices, this scenario can be more frequent for the foreseeable future.