Account security and you

First order of business. Hearthstone is fun, and somehow I'm half a week or so into the future as a result of letting that have it's way with me.

Main thing though I want to point out is a little reminder about security and phishing attempts, detailed above. As someone who's basically been hit several times in the past few months and more or less "lost" my identity, I'm more on the look out for possible scams and the like. 

Some general pointers after the break.

• First order of business is the sad truth of the internet. Anything you throw out there usually can and WILL be used against you. 

Joined a forum ages ago where you had a falling out, but still have your stuff like your Steam name / PSN / XBL Tag up or personal email in the open? Sucks to be you, since that'll show up on search results. This ties into my next point...

• Always use a different password for every place you're at.

See, even if you think you're slick and got GREAT defenses on your system or know the tricks, you're just begging for something to happen and get a backhand across the face. With cyber attacks on the rise and information being a lucrative business as of late, you just invite yourself to tons of trouble. Every single place on the internet has some kind of security flaw at one point or another on it, just waiting to be exploited, and sadly there's ALWAYS someone sitting around trying to figure out how to exploit it so they can make a quick buck or ruble.

Sometimes it's as simple as an infected image loading on a site someone put up without knowing, other times it's more complex like a certain forum using a version that's out of date and has noted security flaws, but is possibly abandoned due to age or not updated since the admin tweaked his coding too much and it'll break his forums. A dozen other similar scenarios play out like this, but say some forum you joined decade ago that's still up gets some person willing to hack it, and you're STILL using the same password and even ID today as you were back then. Guess what? They just got handed your account on every site you've joined with that name, which they can usually look up on a search either by said ID or by your password registered. Bon appetit, monsieur hacker~!

• Always avoid clicking links

Like the image above that help spurred this random splurging of knowledge, the guy shot a link off to someone randomly over Steam asking him to "add" another player. The url is actually misspelled as it's meant to redirect to a keylogger site, to jack your info. Notice that it's to steamcommuRLITY instead of steamcommUNIITY on that link.

Another fun fact to check the authenticity of links is to hover over them with your mouse, as it'll usually show the URL it'll direct you to in this time of HTML shenanigans. Get an email from Blizzard saying something about your account and needing you to log in to verify things or they'll ban you? Too bad, it's probably going to redirect you to a .jp or one letter off site to get dat precious info out of you. Even if the email gets past your spam / junk filters, it's always a good idea to check it out anyways. Usually you hover over and it'll show the link to you on the bottom of your browser, so you can manually verify if it's legit and going to the same URL or not. Obviously you'll still want to be on the ball and see if the URL is even legit or not. 

Best way to counter such antics is to just type in the URL yourself into your browser. No scripts to redirect you that way, provided you're using the legitimate URL as opposed to... Whatever bollocks they provided you with.

• NEVER save your Credit / Debit info online. ANYWHERE!

Pretty much says it all. I recently lost my PSN account due to having it linked to Origin, where I never got around to removing my debit card info from. New FIFA released, hackers oversea went wild with security exploits and were able to access my PSN account somehow and just brute force purchases due to the info being stored with EA, which needless to say, were contested and reversed.

Sadly Sony banned my nearly decade old account, since they don't take kindly to charge backs, even if I was legally in the right to protect myself. It seems that's also par for the course with other businesses, since I've read during that where even Steam and other "good public image" companies do similar things without batting an eye, just flatout blacklisting the card and account. Just food for thought for those in the future reading this.

So yeah, stolen info and accounts and all that. Serious stuff.