HACKED!

 

I am currently maintaining an account each among the four freelance outsourcing companies that I signed up registrations with. All four of them are legit and all four of them I registered as a creative writer and book reviewer.

Among those four I have my favorite site which has a great deal of job offers, easy project transaction arrangement, excellent support system for the contractors like me and convenient financial system as well.

Four days ago, as I opened my dashboard, A red tab on the top of it really caught my attention. The urgent notification served its purpose of notifying me per se. It said, “ Your Financial Account has been temporarily suspended, Please contact Customer Support”.

Four days ago was supposed to be my pay day. The site doesn’t really follow specific days for pay day. It depends upon when your work week started and ended. So, receiving the notification got me worried. As suggested, I contact support and they attended to my report. The deal is, there was a phishing attempt noted and was believed that my account was the target. Who ever the bastard that has the nerve to do this managed to creep into my files and somehow resides where the articles that I’ve written and some other work stuff quietly resides.

It took 48 hours, with a constant exchange of updates and replies for them to resolve the issue. The financial suspension was an action to prevent my earnings and gave me and them an ample time to work it out. The Risk Management Department of the company has advised me to perform a lot of security measures not only for my particular account of this freelance outsourcing company but also to my other email accounts, blog sites, social networks and the sorts.

I know I am always careful. WCW-my husband dear has told me countless of times about online security. I got pissed at him for having such complicated passwords that even locked us out of the account because we were confused of which is which. I appreciate the Risk Management Department of the company for protecting me in their own way. I admit I got rudely irritated when I didn’t get to access my financial account but like they said the action wasn’t there for no reason at all. And with that, I felt I have come to love this freelance company even more.

Lesson learned:

1. Create strong passwords. This can be done by having alpha-numeric combinations. It would help a lot to make use of upper and lower keys characters. Simple words that can be read in reverse are known to be weak passwords and have offers a high risk of potential threat. Change passwords at least within six months.

2. Install an anti-virus software that covers emails, links and all the corners of your computer hard drive.

3. Be cautious in receiving and opening links on emails, IMs, social network messages, chats and tweets.

4.Have a separate email account to be use only for banking purposes and other personal matters excluding social network registrations and other sites that has means and ways that can be viewed by the public.

5. See to it that programs installed are legit and has licensed. It is undeniable that these are worth some bucks but then again, it is better safe than sorry.

6. Be aware of your device’s activity. Perform scans as often as possible. Update programs to the latest version available. Remove spams and tracking cookies. Practice the habit of reporting malicious programs.

There are more ways than I can count of to be safe online. The threats were removed from my system and once again I was protected. The suspension of my financial account was lifted after they were able to make sure I am covered. I was able to work again with my worksheet clock ticking. I just got to do what I have to.