Tech Talk
By Tak Sato
In the real world, 2020 showed us how fragile life can be under the threat of COVID-19.
In the digital world, news broke December 8 that an adversarial foreign government-backed cyber unit intruded on several federal government agency computer systems. It’s an ongoing story, as security researchers uncover evidence and victims of the unprecedented hack that affected not only government agencies but also private corporations.
Threats
Cyber war is as much a real and active theater of war, like Afghanistan or anywhere in the world where our brave men and women are deployed to protect our freedom.
Even though cyberwar may not directly kill troops or people (yet), stolen national secrets may tip the powers of the negotiations on the international stage while the ill-gained personal information can be traded in the black market of the digital world, also known as the dark web, and used for identity theft.
The antagonist in the 1992 movie “Sneakers” said: “There’s a war out there, old friend. A world war. And it’s not about who’s got the most bullets. It’s about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think… it’s all about the information.“
A great cast including Boomer favorites like Robert Redford, Ben Kingsley, Mary McDonnell, and James Earl Jones makes this movie enjoyable and relatable, even to a non-techie. What’s remarkable is that a 29-year-old movie plot eerily predicts the first two decades of the 21st Century digital world and what we are currently experiencing.
While these digital world intrusions affect us, unfortunately, they are outside our domain of control. We can’t control the security of the information stored at these government agencies and private companies. Should we then throw up our arms and give up?
Take Charge
My opinion is a resounding “no” but what can we do for something we have no control over?
This is one of my 2021 new year’s “tech” (or is it “Tak?”) resolutions. I intend to be vigilant by looking for signs of identity theft.
The digital world tool we use here is the website https://www.annualcreditreport.com that gives us our up-to-date credit reports from Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. I know, I know — EquiFax already was breached some time ago, and we can only hope that they have hardened their perimeter and internal defenses to protect our credit information.
When accessing this website, I can’t repeat the following enough and I use their language verbatim: “Don’t be fooled by look-alike sites. You can be sure that you are on the right site if you type www.AnnualCreditReport.com in your browser address line. Don’t come to this site by clicking on a link in another site or in an email.”
Let me add to the above. As browsers (Chrome, FireFox, EDGE and Safari) continue to evolve, some may not show the prefix “www.” after you type it in and hit the enter key on your keyboard or tap the arrow button on your screen. Just giving you a heads-up on this ever-changing browser behavior that may be confusing.
A locked keypad icon when you get on to their website signifies the communication between your device and their website is encrypted and private. Additionally, I recommend typing in the website address, (URL) carefully at the top of your browser in full instead of searching for the website using a search engine such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, Duckduckgo, etc. to avoid having to click a secondary link from the search results that, as their warning states, also lists look-alike sites. Bottom line, go to the website directly by typing in the correct address https://www.annualcreditreport.com.
Due to the COVID-19 crisis, they are posting weekly online reports until April 2021 (usually only three reports annually). Combined with many other Internet Street SmartsSM — the topic for the next column, which includes checking your bank accounts and credit card statements for unfamiliar charges — this should provide clues when something is out-of-place.
By being vigilant in your digital world and practicing good habits, just like you’ve learned to follow street smarts in the real world, you can continue to reap the benefits of being digitally literate.
