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As you get more attention, be more aware of your cybersecurity... (use 2FA)

As we get more attention online, whether our videos are getting seen by more people or people are following us on media or our blog is getting more popular or whatever. The inevitability is that we tend we will draw more more attention which includes some potential we don't want. And right now, I'm gonna talk more about the security side of things, you know, cyber security and things like that. Or just how do we maintain peace of mind as we continue growing our attention? So Cyposecurity.
I think that's very important. If you don't have what's called 2 factor authentication, authentication author authorization. If you don't have 2 factor authentication installed on your all your accounts. I highly recommend what I mean by that is Facebook, you know, Google, PayPal, and other places. And you probably have seen apps such as the 1 that's probably the most popular Google Authenticator app Right?
Google Authenticator. I don't care about showing these numbers. These numbers change, like every what? Half a minute or something like that. So it doesn't matter.
So Google Authenticator is the app to install. And with that, you can do what's called 2FA, and number 2FA2 factor authentication. In all the popular services you use. I have Facebook, Instagram, Google, LinkedIn, PayPal, Stripe, Uber, Yeah. So those are those are the main main ones and others that that you that you use that has some kind of security attached to it.
Banks, of course, have various types of ways. But b, just if you do 2FA on all your accounts, you're pretty much going to prevent the vast majority of security issues, people taking over your account, things like that. The second thing about social security It's harder for me to talk about, which is you kind of have to learn over time what messages are from scammers and scammers. And what messages aren't. I mean, it's because I could show you examples, but of course, the examples will change every day because they get more and more clever they you know, you get a message, you think it's from Facebook, it's not from Facebook.
Right? Some are obviously, but some aren't, and you have to know how to tell. For example, emails. When you get an email, you have to look at the from email address. And if it's not at facebook dot com, probably not from Facebook.
Sometimes Facebook has other ones like at maybe like secure dot facebook dot com or something like that. But If you're not sure, don't take any action that email or that message is telling you. If you're not sure, you should take a screenshot of that message, and post it on your social media or ask your savvy friends, text savvy friends, hey, do you think this is a real Facebook message or Is it a scan or phishing attack? PHI, SHI and G, phishing is where you click on the website and in fact, well below this video, I'll link to an actual phishing scan that I saw that some of my clients were being affected by. And I was able to find that website and show you why it's not Facebook or whatever.
Okay? So look for that. And if I don't remember, please go ahead and comment below and ask me ask me for it. So just over time, as you learn what things issues scams look like and and and other scams and frauds, you'll say, okay, you just get more savvy over time. Like, oh, yeah, I know these kinds of messages are not from repeatable source.
Okay. So that's a cyber security part of it. In terms of other piece of so with that, of course, I have in my however long I've been on social media since 2006 with Facebook, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, I started in 2006. I believe. And now it's been, what, 16 years, I have never once had my account been hacked.
It's impressive because I've been very active since 4006, not once have I had my account been hacked. Whereas all that time, just about everyone around me has has had their accounts hacked. Because I know these 2 things, 2 factor authentication, and I'm very savvy with knowing what messages to ignore and and not to pay attention to and not to do that, you know, logging in on a screen that looks like Facebook, it looks like PayPal when it's not. It's like I know how to look at the URL. Wait.
That's not Facebook dot com. That's not blah blah blah. So just over time, you'll you'll you'll you'll learn these things as you as you just take special precaution whenever a website's asking you to log in. Whenever you click on a message and it then says log in, you're like, wait, I shouldn't have to log in. I'm usually logged in.
Why is this asking me to log in again? And then you'll learn over time. Oh, wait, that's safe, and that's not safe. Okay? And then just in terms of, like, more maybe just learning to and maybe I'll do this in a separate segment.
Actually, just other aspects of sort of peace of mind when getting more notoriety? Like, how how do we do that? I'll do that in a second second because I wanna keep this just more about the cyber security part of it.

Click the following links, one by one, and follow the instructions to enable 2-factor authentication on these important websites (assuming you use those websites regularly)... 

  1. Google

  2. FB

  3. Instagram

  4. LinkedIn

  5. Paypal

  6. Stripe (scroll down to Two-step authentication)

  7. Any other payment methods you use
Last updated 9 Jan 2023.

26 comments

Michael Williams
 

Thanks for the reminder about 2-factor authentication!


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Hi. I'd appreciate the phishing scam video link you mentioned. Thanks!

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George Kao
Staff
 

@Laura Greiner thanks for the reminder! Here it is: https://youtu.be/SeISXKN-paA

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Devora Gila Berkowitz
 

Do you recommend having a VPN, or using something like TOR browser? 

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George Kao
Staff
 

@Devora Gila Berkowitz I don't use either one at home, but if planning to use public wifi eg. when traveling, I would definitely use VPN.

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Devora Gila Berkowitz
 

@George Kao  Could you explain more? Wouldn't it be more vulnerable to be at home without a VPN ; ie. same address all the time and easily identified? Why the danger in the public wifi? Because you are on a network with other computers? 

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George Kao
Staff
 

@Devora Gila Berkowitz Yes, correct. 

Public or any shared WiFi means you might be sharing it with a hacker. 

But if the only people with access to your home WiFi are trusted, and you are generally savvy with what websites you log into, you probably don't need VPN. 

Most sites we log into these days are https so it's already encrypted.

More here:

 https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgxnwk/you-probably-dont-need-a-vpn

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Thank you for the heads up reminder on using 2 factor authorization etc etc!!

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Thanks for the helpful and important reminder.

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George,  I realized you had done this video on cyber security.  Great.  Not sure but I started to get more active on Linked in as I am listening to your workshop and boom, I get this email to my business email address which was  saying they had taken over my website.  It went to a different internet provider and looked at my website.  looked fine.  But now I am not sure.  Is there something I should do to check it again.  It looks okay but thought maybe I am not checking properly.  And I deleted that email of course.  Was really creepy!!


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George Kao
Staff
 

@Jeanne Hartman sadly, we are all starting to get more spam/scam emails that try to get our attention by saying our website or some other account has been compromised.  If you are able to access it and another friend can, then I wouldn't worry about it.  Over time you'll start to learn how to quickly tell these scams.  As a rule: don't click on any links from strangers and disbelieve their warnings.

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celina catipovski
 

Ok everyone I will check my 2 factor authorizations  

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Hi George, so thoughtful and practical of you to generate this disucussion and to guide us on how to prevent it.
I am savvy but one 'potential' weak area is my web based e mail address which does not have 2 factor authentiation. I do have quite alot of e mail addresses - luckily my YT is a gmail but there are weaknesses in areas where I use my domain web based e mail. 
I will remain vigilant and (as yet) have also never been hacked and I hope it stays like that as it is a horrible experience!

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I appreciate you reminding us to be vigilant. I will check the setting for this 2FA as well.

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As I am venturing into new territory by creating a video podcast, this has definitely been a topic of interest to me. I greatly appreciate @George Kao's comments on cookies since that directly addresses one of my concerns. I also like having the reminder and encouragement to remain mindful as I make my way into a space that I have needed to retreat from often due to personal needs of mental health and clarity. All that said, I wanted to share another resource that I have found useful and offers an added layer of peace of mind. 

I recently learned about hardware keys for cyber security. I came to hear about these when watching a video by a mid-sized YouTube channel that was raising the awareness of more popular channels falling victim to hackers. This particular YouTuber lost control of their channel due to 2FA fatigue, which can happen to larger businesses with enough people that they were not always staying mindful of the source of 2FA prompts. It subsequently took a couple weeks to regain control of their channel and content once. I do not want to increase feelings of fear, especially when I believe building a personal sense of mindfulness can probably prevent a similar situation from happening. However, I thought it was worth mentioning, since I plan to incorporate the use of hardware keys in addition to 2FA.

I will also share a link to the cybersecurity YouTuber who spoke about these devices, but since I am still new to this space, I'm not entirely sure if that's allowed. I am inclined to think it is ok to share links to resources for information or educational purposes, but please correct me if I missed something.

https://youtu.be/L5V9JDG3cfQ

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George Kao
 

@Whitney Perrine Thanks for sharing!  I'm still not seeing the need to go beyond 2FA at this time. It's too much. Most people don't even have 2FA yet, so we need to spread the message about that first.  The video you shared -- they're selling a product as an affiliate, so we need to be especially aware of the commercial intent there :)

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@George Kao - Do you have a resource to set up Google Authenticator on a Google account. I'd prefer that to getting a text.  Thanks.

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George Kao
 

@Angie Evans Yes, go to your mobile phone app store and search Google Authenticator.  It should be the one that has 100 Million downloads (skip the ones that merely have 1 million downloads!)

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@George Kao - the instructions for PayPal no longer work and I can't find anything through PayPal. any chance you have some kind of extra info on that? It doesn't even have a link for 2-SA and their help box doesn't recognize it either.  

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George Kao
 

@Angie Evans I'm seeing it under Profile Settings > Login and security > 2-step verification.  See if that helps?

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@George Kao I have 2 factor set up for everything but Paypal, I'm realizing, so thank you for speaking to this! Looks like Paypal gives limited options and I'm needing to set up through the  google authenticator app. A bit nervous about what might happen if I lose my phone, do you have any suggestions on ways to set things up in case I lose my phone? 

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George Kao
 

@megan spencer you're right that you'd have to really trust not to lose your phone by using a mobile app like Google Authenticator.  Less secure but still better than no 2FA is to use SMS or email based authentication... usually an option that they give you. 

Alternatively you would need to use a service like https://authy.com/features/multiple-devices/

...which allows you to have authentication via multiple devices.

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Thank you for this reminder. I checked my accounts and now all squared away!

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I only had 2FA for PayPal. Now adding other accounts. Thank you!

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Looks like the link for Linkedin is broken.
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George Kao
 

@Roxanne Koh (Non-Diagnostic Therapist) I just tried it and it works? Maybe you have to be logged into LinkedIn first, then try the link.  If not, then perhaps it's an issue of being in a different country and LinkedIn uses a different link there. If so, log into your LinkedIn, go to Settings, then click "Sign in and security".

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