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NORTH AmERIcAN Newsline APRIL 30, 2021 | The Indian Eye 28

CYber seCUritY tHreats

Community leaders organize meeting

on safety measures

Phishing attacks are on the rise more than ever as attackers attempt to trick individuals

Our Bureau

New York
ilima Madan and Jyo-
ti Gupta acted imme-
Ndiately in organizing a
virtual alertness ‘Cyber Security
Threat’ Zoom meeting for the
community leaders of New York
as soon as Dr Neeru Bham-
bri shared her story of how her
WhatsApp was hacked into
and how she was totally handi-
capped for several days until it
started back allowing her to add
security pin and a verification
email to secure her account –
not to mention the hardship she
faced to accomplish that. No
sooner many other leading indi-
viduals were affected the same
as possibly somewhere, some-
how names and numbers were
captured. financial or other losses are ir- these hackers push one to act browsers like Safari and others
Slides of screen shots con- reparable - with little or no re- impulsively under duress. with tendencies to automatical-
taining links, friendly chat mes- course to trace the miscreants. This call was also to ensure ly run trusted scripts.
sages, misleading and imperson- Personal experience stories that people put in place all pos- Phishing attacks are on the
ating calls to family members shared on this call by actual sible security measures and rise more than ever where the
that are uncovered once your victims of such scams served to ‘don’t talk to strangers’, just like attacker attempts to trick an in-
phone is hacked through pre- alert and were all too scary as to we teach our young children. dividual who becomes the victim
vious messages, group chats, how vulnerable the best of us is The possibility of breach of PII – into giving away sensitive data
shared photos etc. are all part of to scammers and hackers. Con personally identifiable informa- and account credentials. Hack-
the hacker network game and artists are daft! tion and its misuse can cripple ers and predator access through
very deceptively they contact Most shared in detail how your daily life and cause panic, the Internet - your email, bank
someone close enough to you and what time in the night or fear and loss of valuable infor- account, WhatsApp, cell phone
who will immediately transfer early am they were contacted, mation and family funds. and your PC, all of which is a
funds for emergency situations what type of messages they re- There are countless new tremendous threat to your secu-
posed by the imposter acting ceived, how voices were imper- threats being developed daily. rity. One can never be too care-
as the hacked individual or vic- sonated and if the caller was Over the years, we have ful about all sensitive personal
tim. The time lines, language questioned, the voice would been cautious of many different information and damage that
and modus operandi used even muffle or fade or the caller gave kinds of computer or electron- can ensue due to wrong hands
though partially of fully known misinformation. How much ic item malware that have been getting hold of your Social Se-
as general awareness to many money was asked for and how created, each one affecting curity number, bank account
become a victim by taking genu- many lost funds through imme- our systems in different ways information, credit cards, check
ine people and family members diate ‘fund needs in crisis’ type like – Ransomware – Trojans – book, driver’s license, Medi-
to act in a crunch time so that of situations created by im- Worms – Hidden backdoors etc. care card, passport and so much
without too much investigat- posters was mind boggling spe- where hackers and attackers more. Stay alert and be extreme-
ing, they get victimized and the cially as to the extent to which exploit the use of certain web ly careful is the bottom line.

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