More than 400 cases of social media and email hacking were reported to Essex Police last year.
New data shows the county constabulary recorded the ninth most hacking reports of police forces in England and Wales' between January and December in 2020, analysis from AddictiveTips.com shows.
April – the month following the start of Britain’s first coronavirus lockdown on March 23 – was the worst on record with a whopping 53 reports.
February saw the least number of cases at 23.
Across the year, victims of hacking reported a total financial loss of £10,900; comparable to a personal loss of £27 for each individual case.
London’s Metropolitan Police had the highest amount of social media and email hacking cases between at a shocking 2,357 reports, the equivalent of six incidents per day in the capital.
From the 2,357 cases, the collective financial loss victims suffered was £1.8 million – equivalent to £764 per case.
A map of hacking reports in England and Wales. Photo: AddictiveTips.com
AddictiveTips.com has issued some top tips on how to protect your social media and email accounts from hackers:
1. A strong password is essential
Don’t make life easy for hackers by having a basic password. You need to have a password that is hard to crack and to achieve this, you must use a combination of different characters to create a complex password that include uppercase letters, lowercase letters, special characters, and numbers. Also, try to regularly update your password – do so at least once every three months.
2. Opt-in for multi-factor authentication
Most social media and email companies now have multi-factor authentication to add an element of additional security. Multi-factor authentication is where you must provide at least two pieces of personal information to verify your identity (i.e. username/password + security question or SMS/email ‘pin’ token) before gaining access to your full social media or email account.
3. Carefully assess third-party applications
It has become the norm for people to open new accounts by using their existing social media or email login credentials. Understandably so, as ‘log in with Facebook/Google’ is much more convenient than going through the whole ‘create new account’ process but in doing so, be mindful what sensitive information you are agreeing to give third-party apps access to from your social media/email accounts. To avoid this, take your time to familiarise yourself with the terms and conditions before signing up
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