It seems that there are a number of you who make some use of TripAdvisor.com for planning your overseas trips. TripAdvisor is travel and restaurant website that provides hotel and restaurant reviews, accommodation bookings etc. but the phishing scammers are currently targeting South African and Australian users with a phishing scam to try to get access to their TripAdvisor account.
Be on the lookout for a phishing scam that *might* target university personnel and student accounts over the next few days:
Hi <your name>,
Want to keep your username?
Since you haven’t been on TripAdvisor in a while, your username <your TripAdvisor username> will expire in two weeks. Want to keep it? Simply click on the button below:
Keep my username
While this might not seem to be much of an issue for some people, the real danger is that, in many cases, university personnel and students – some making use of TripAdvisor, use the same password for all their Internet accounts. According to a recent Ofcom report, over 55% of Internet users older than 16 used the same password for most – if not all! – the websites they tended to use.
If you do use the same password for lots of sites, and one of those sites are hacked, (like Tripadvisor) and hackers could start using your “leaked password” on multiple sites, they could gain access to more areas of your life such as your email, banking, social media and other accounts.
A very useful site to check if any of your online account have been hacked is https://haveibeenpwned.com/ This site helps you to check if you have an account that has been compromised in a data breach.
I concede that remembering passwords can be a real challenge, especially if you have a lot of online accounts. I recommend using password management software – also sometimes known as a password vault – like 1Password, KeePass and Lastpass.
Password management software can remember all your hard-to-crack passwords for you (they can even generate them to make sure they’re super complex), and store them securely behind one master password.
Please be very careful out there. Don’t become a statistic or a victim of identity theft!
[Article by David Wiles]
