this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2024
32 points (97.1% liked)
Asklemmy
43822 readers
1027 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Considering how many data breaches have happened this year alone, I wouldn’t be very surprised if your phone number was leaked in one of them, along with your email address. Make sure you use unique passwords for all your online accounts (a password manager can help with this).
I do already use different passwords for every account that I have and I changed my Gmail password recently. Is there anything else I should be worried about?
The scariest threat in the event you're affected by the data breach is if someone has enough information to open credit in your name. There's a website you can look yourself up on. I have it in my pc I think, but not my phone. They have my name and ssn, but an old address that's not valid any more. Maybe someone can link it. I'll see if I can find it in the morning if no one does.
2FA is good to use when available.
That's mainly it. It could be the most likely threat is to email you scary things to try to get you to click on the wrong thing. Or calling you up with the classic threat that the sheriff is on his way to arrest you now over some outstanding debt. I know wtf I'm doing with security and I've still fallen for a phishing scheme (caught it before any harm was some, but still clicked the damn email). My wife fell for the sheriff thing—sucks when they do find a blemish on your credit to really sell you on they are a real debt collector.
That's the reason I don't open random emails and I never answer the phone unless I'm expecting a call/text from a specific number. I'm too paranoid about getting scammed/hacked. I'd be using 2FA if it wasn't for the fact that I'd have concerns about potentially loosing access to my accounts because the trusted device stops working or something.