October is National Cyber Security Awareness month. Intel has a campaign called #ClickSmart where they are trying to educate people about bad links that can lead to them becoming victims of cybercrime. They use examples of phishing emails, scams on social networks, bad texts, search results, and other places for dangerous links.
This video shows a few Californians taking the #ClickSmart Challenge. They are then rewarded with a caramel onion or a caramel apple (they don’t know which they’re getting) depending on whether they answered correctly or incorrectly.
You can take Intel’s ClickSmart challenge and tweet your score for a chance to win a caramel apple and a Surface Pro 3. The Challege is available along with more information at https://digitalsecurity.intel.com/clicksmart/
Intel McAfee’s blog on the ClickSmart challenge has some good times to avoid bad links or you can get some assistance from their SiteAdvisor product.
- Check URLs for misspellings or interesting suffixes. For example, if you see www.faceboook.ru, don’t click it.
- Only open texts and emails from people you know. But even if you do know the sender, be wary for any suspicious subject lines or links. Hackers can try to lure you through your friends and family.
- Beware of emails, texts, and search results offering anything for free. If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably isn’t true.