Always stay vigilant online
I share some of my experiences in these +45 years being an expert in cybersecurity, mentioning some random incidents that are just a random sample of some events that I have experienced.
Talking about cybersecurity is a topic that I find very exciting, especially because I have had many experiences in relation to this up close.
Since I have been the founder of several groups dedicated to the subject and led several initiatives that involve different hackers, both good and bad. I have had to interact, know and deal directly with the way of thinking of each of these individuals.
Generally, the common factor is taking advantage of the person's ignorance and to do this, believe me, they carry out a study of the victim or possible victims.
Based on that, they focus all their attacks.
In this publication, I am going to tell you two or three episodes that I have experienced in direct relation to this, that have happened to me and that I have had to overcome.
Obviously, they have given me a lesson that I will share with you at the end of this entire publication.
Actual picture of the popular area.
Image from my youtube channel captured with my Krip 4B Phone.
The first thing I want to tell you happened to me about five years ago.
In those days, I frequented a place here that is, let's say, a popular area.
An area where you can buy food at very affordable prices.
This area is characterized because it is a place of very poor people, and the prices of food and things that are available there are much cheaper than anywhere else in the city.
The site is visited by people of all levels and from all social strata, always looking for the best prices.
The thing with all this is that I was there, enjoying, sitting, drinking a bottle of a liquor that I liked to enjoy in those days.
I always sat in that place to watch people go by, because it was one of my favorite hobbies.
I was alone at that time and well, it turned out that, since it is a highly dangerous area, although I am used to living here for more than 40 years, it doesn't scare me at all. But as Murphy's Law says, "if bad things can happen, they will happen".
What happened is that a boy, who is not from the area but comes from another place, simply came to attack me with a gun. He targeted me and stole my bag in which he had a sum of money, about 50 dollars, and other things.
Among the things that were there was precisely my cell phone, in which I had all the keys to my social networks, access to my bank accounts with all that data and, of course, my keys to my home and my notebook. savings that I had at that time, my notebook with my bank details.
Of course, I was very alarmed at the time.
I had to give the bag with all my documents to the thief, the robber, and the boy left very calmly.
He told me: "Look, don't chase me, because if you chase me, I'll shoot you, I'll kill you." Obviously, I didn't chase him, since it was up to me to return me to my home and figure out how to get into my apartment without keys and all that.
I had to find a locksmith and a series of things.
Image from Perlinator at Pixabay
The thing with this is that days after this first episode happened to me, a neighbor that I knew, who had a bad reputation, had a reputation for being someone who was involved in drugs and robberies, I saw on her social networks what she was doing. show that he had my phone and was hacking my social media accounts.
Immediately, when trying to contact her that way, after she had already regained access to my home and access to the main social networks, especially Facebook, I managed to contact her and evidently, she blocked me.
What I did was report the case directly to the local authorities in my city and they took action on the matter.
Fortunately, sites like Facebook, for example, also warned me that there was someone trying to access my account from a browser that was different from mine.
I immediately, well, through the computer here at home, managed to access my account and change all my passwords and all my data, so nothing else managed to happen on this occasion, but it was a scare that I got.
The other incident that I had to go through was an opportunity in which, using my metamask wallet, I subscribed to one of these links of precisely promotions that were on Instagram.
They were offering airdrops, cryptocurrency airdrops, and it looked very legitimate because there were messages from other people who had shown that they had received this $50 or $100 airdrop.
I legitimately clicked on the link and allowed it and agreed to metamask's signature, as they always do in these cases of these airdrops and everything was fine.
The problem was that, after about three days, I realized that my metamask balance of my dollars that I had there had been emptied directly to zero and it seemed that a transfer had been made from my metamask to another account that I don't know and what had happened is that directly when deciding to accept the metamask authentication signatures for I had given these people access to my wallet directly and I had given them access so that they could make transactions directly with what I had in my metamask wallet.
Image from Neo_Artemis at Pixabay
So what they did was simply transfer the balance of 20 or 30 dollars that they had in dollars and they transferred it to their account and they did this through tornado cash to encrypt all the transactions and not know where the money was going.
Well, obviously on that occasion I also lost the amount I had in my metamask, but it was simply for reasons of being ambitious and greedy and believing that I was going to really be able to earn that eyedrop.
So I had these two bad experiences that were due to carelessness, for trusting the first one and for being careless, as well and also for trusting an eyedrop that I had not really checked if it was from a legitimate company or if it was from people who were recognized or supported by large exchange houses like Binance. Which is generally one of the steps to take before trusting these types of sites.
What I can say is that what I learned about cybersecurity in these two cases is, first of all, not to go out with credit cards or personal items unless it is really necessary.
Since then, I take the precaution of not doing so and only take out my phone or my debit cards when I am really going to need and use it, the rest I always keep in my home for security reasons and because I have lived these experiences.
Also what I have learned with the second experience is to verify the sites that are legitimate, because in this way they are legitimate or supported airdrops, since there is security involved.
Before I finish, I want to share another episode that I just remembered recently.
Through WhatsApp, a neighbor in the community where I live had her account stolen.
They managed to gain access to their WhatsApp and another way of scam that these scammers use is to start sending messages to the WhatsApp contacts that they steal, offering them to buy dollars and exchange the dollars for fiat currency.
Image from Gordon Johnson at Pixabay
This neighbor, a woman of about 80 years old who does not exactly deal with dollars, contacted me offering to buy me some dollars and I, at that time, coincidentally had some dollars available for sale.
He did this through the WhatsApp group of the neighborhood community and he sent the message to several of the neighbors, to several of the people, and I almost managed to sell him the dollars and I would have gotten into a tremendous scam, because what these people do is meet the person in a rarely visited place and rob them, taking their money and not paying anything.
Generally, they do it that way and they wanted to scam me like that.
Since it seemed very strange to me that my neighbor contacted me about that when she was not dedicated to that, what I did was directly, since she lives across the street from me, knock on her door and ask her if she was selling dollars.
What was my surprise that my own neighbor told me that she was not selling dollars and that her WhatsApp had been hacked and that she did not have access to her WhatsApp.
So that wasn't her and she didn't know what was going on.
I showed her the WhatsApp messages and she started calling all the people to let them know that she was not the one offering to buy dollars or anything like that.
Fortunately, it didn't go any further than that, but it is also important to keep in mind that these scammers use social engineering to try to convince everyone, especially the elderly, who are easier to deceive because they know little about technology and are more vulnerable.
Always be aware of this, it is important not to be fooled and to verify everything and be very careful, especially nowadays, with your data.
If you have reached this point in this publication, I thank you for reading and I receive with great joy and affection every comment and every appreciation you give me.
Until next time! . Thanks for reading!.
Credits:
Thumbnail created in Bing AI and edited on Canva.com
Images captured and video recorded using my Krip 4b phone.
This is my black cat "manclar", this account is to honor his dead (it happened years ago).
The divisor is made by @albiro2050, if you want one made in your style, visit him and he will gladly take care of your commission.