Here’s 4 ways to keep yourself cyber-safe

PHOENIX (AZFamily) — Glen Olinger is tech-savvy, but he knows scams are getting more elaborate and believable.

“It went from mail to telephone, to the internet and it’s so much more and it’s so much easier for scams these days to go around,” he said.

Olinger and his wife Diana even saw it happen. “My mother was terrible about answering the phone, and we even set her up on an answering machine and said ‘let the answering machine take it,’ but she would pick it up,” Diana Olinger said. “She couldn’t resist. She got a check one time that she thought was real.”

In that case, the bank stepped in and stopped everything, but many people weren’t so lucky. According to the Federal Trade Commission, consumers reported losing more than $10 billion to fraud last year.

Cybersecurity Awareness Month events in communities like Fountain View Village aim to change the trend. “You have to be up to date because there’s new ones all the time,” Diana Olinger said.

Seniors were reminded of the red flags of a scam, including unexpected requests and financial demands using cryptocurrency or gift cards that are harder to trace.

But it’s not just seniors who are targeted by scammers and hackers.

“Really, hackers are looking for the low-hanging fruit and looking to victimize just about anyone they can to make a quick buck,” said Joseph Oregon from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, also known as CISA.

There are four easy things everyone can do to make themselves less of a target online, according to CISA:

• Turn on multifactor authentication
• Recognize and report phishing attempts
• Update security software
• Use strong passwords

“Anywhere from 12 to 16 characters, using special characters as well as numeric values will also help and minimize the likeliness of someone compromising your password,” Oregon said.

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