Cybaverse: Personal Email Security

Do you have any email address you have used for years?

Perhaps a Hotmail or Gmail account that you got when you were 16?

I imagine you get plenty of spam and also phishing emails…

Phishing emails are used to trick people into believing the email is from a recognised company, perhaps your bank.

They will try and usually coerce you to click on a link or download an attachment!

You may be quite attached to your hot.stuff69@gmail address you have had since school however it is likely this email address has been involved in a data breach somewhere along the way.

Visit https://haveibeenpwned.com/ to see if yours has been involved in a data breach.

If so, you can help combat phishing emails and hackers by setting up with a new email address, OLS recommends researching your own secure email address providers, however two that we are familiar with are Tutamail and Protonmail. Both of these are free for a basic package and offer a range of additional services that the likes of Hotmail do not.

Once you have set up this new email address, keep this address reserved for only sensitive services. This may include your online banking, business accounts, HMRC, etc. As the email address is new it will not be in a data breach dump where hackers have access to it, it will limit the number of phishing emails being sent through and provide you with some reassurance that the emails coming through are from the genuine senders.

As long as you are strict for what you use this email address for then it should never receive phishing emails or spam (unless of course your bank or HMRC has a data breach). We would highly advise keeping your old email address and using it for your day to day sign ups.

For more information or advice please get in touch.