Why You Should Use Login Notifications
Cyberattacks can be difficult to spot. In most cases you will only notice a cyberattack when it’s too late and a significant amount of damage has already been done.
One tool you can use to help keep you on your toes is login notifications. Many people might overlook this feature because they don’t want to receive a notification whenever they log in to one of their accounts.
However, these notifications can be helpful to warn you of a security breach. If you don’t have them turned on you might not be able to take the necessary actions to protect your accounts in time.
Why Are Login Notifications Helpful?
The majority of people will overlook login notifications because they feel that they don’t need to be told whenever they are logging into their own accounts. However, this feature was designed for security reasons.
Login notifications are there to let you know when your account has been accessed. This means that if you get a notification but you haven’t logged into your account at the corresponding time, your account has been breached by a hacker.
Having these notifications enabled will give you enough time to take the steps required to prevent the hackers from stealing your infomation. If they get hold of your information they have several different crimes that they can commit.
What to do if Your Accounts Have Been Breached?
If you have your login notifications enabled, you will quickly be able to spot when your accounts have been hacked. This will allow you to take action as quickly as possible. Here’s what you need to do:
Firstly, you need to report your account breach to the website or app. If this happens with your bank account, they will most likely have a 24-hour support service where they can help you to get your account back.
The next step is to change your passwords. It is best to change all passwords on your most important accounts first, as you never know which ones could have been breached, especially if you use the same password for multiple different accounts.
Then you need to go to your security settings and select the option to ‘log out of all devices. This will log you out of all your devices, but it also log out the hacker that has breached your account. Since you changed your password, they won’t be able to get back in as quickly.
The final step isis to assess the damage they have done. We can’t always see what the hacker has done to our accounts. In some cases, they simply copy your personal information to commit fraud or identity theft. However, it is always best to report this just in case. Other times they will transfer money or approve fraudulent transactions.
How to Keep Your Accounts Secure
Keeping your accounts as secure as possible is the best way to prevent a cyberattack from happening in the first place. You can do this by avoiding some of the critical mistakes that the majority of people make when it comes to their account security.
The first is that they do not use strong passwords. Strong passwords are made up of words or phrases that do not link back to any of your personal information. This information can be stolen or easily accessed by a hacker who can then go on to crack your passwords.
Studies have shown that the strongest passwords are often made up of random words, phrases and numbers. This can be difficult to remember, however, there are some tools you can use to help you with this, which will discuss in the next section.
It is also important to use unique passwords for each of your accounts. This means that you do not use the same password for any two accounts. If one account has been breached, others with the same password can also be breached shortly afterwards.
What Tools Can You Use?
It might be difficult to remember all of these passwords. If the passwords do not relate to you, and they are all different it can cause you some headaches in the long term. It might be tempting to allow your browser to save your passwords, however, this is not recommended.
Most default browser password managers are not secure. Cybercriminals know this and that is why they will specifically target people who do not use a proper password manager. If a hacker were to breach your browser’s password manager, they will have access to all of your login credentials.
Therefore, even if your passwords were all set up correctly, all of your accounts could still be at risk of being breached. This is why it’s so important to use a proper password manager to keep all your accounts as secure as possible.
It’s always best to go with a third-party password manager. There are some free ones available, however, the best password managers have a subscription fee. There are some elements to look out for to identify a good password manager.
The first is that it is a paid service. This means that it will be a legitimate app or website. Always check who the developer is and do some research around the password manager in question.
Another element to look for is that it is secure. A good password manager will key you an ‘access key’. Is a code that is randomly generated just for your account. No one will be able to access your password manager without this key. Make sure you keep it in a safe place where it can’t be stolen.