Are we now more vulnerable than years before?

There are a lot of books on this subject, standing out among all of them perhaps the works of Mitnick on social engineering and the vulnerability that we have become human beings, however, with the passage of time and despite the warnings given by hundreds of experts in security nothing has changed in our societies, we are still vulnerable and prone to be victims of different types of attacks. In fact, it is very likely that we all have heard the story of someone who has taken money from his account, used his credit card or perhaps a little more innocent things like they have stolen his Facebook password but if you count the number of measures that have been developed to combat these security problems could come to think that this type of problem should be eradicated however not so, the reason ?.

We...

Yes, we are still the most vulnerable factor in the systems, our tendency to treat certain information that may seem harmless in a careless way tends to be one of the causes of this, things that seem so unimportant but that can be of great help for attackers with some experience, in the information age not only technologies become more open, people have done it, adding strangers as Facebook friends is something that many of the users of this social network do and not only give them personal information that they themselves have shared or gain access to their accounts (for example, using phishing techniques) but there are also many cases in which these "friends" have managed to get work information that can be used to carry out attacks on companies.

New technologies in the information age have not only connected us to our friends and family, they have also connected us with people who don't have the best intentions and these people are always attentive to any vulnerability to take advantage of this. Most attacks usually start before the attack as such, they are the result of an information gathering work whose depends on the level of ingenuity that the person has regarding how to deal with the information.

The bad guy...

If you think that this bad guys look like the person in the image above you should know that this belief is one of the reasons why people are vulnerable, human beings usually discard a lot of information and only store in our brain the characteristics of facts, places, people, etc. Thus, we create images that allow us to relate all these data, for this reason when we talk about computer security attacks automatically our mind thinks about that image that has helped us create television and films. Think that the attackers that we can find are people with difficulty in relating to people, timid or who always wear black (By the way, this is pretty ridiculous) is one of the most common mistakes people make. Au contraire, the attackers are usually people with excellent communication skills and to relate to others, with a lot of persuasive ability, friendly, etc., are all these skills that allow them to gain the trust of the victims to make specific attacks.

How to avoid it?

We must begin by not underestimating the information, even those data that may appear to be useless can be useful for the attackers. Take security measures in your social networks, do not reveal personal, intimate or work information to strangers, this would not only make you vulnerable to attacks, but in case third parties suffer damage due to your failure because you could also be considered an accomplice, always distrust of strangers on the Internet. Avoid filling out forms with personal information, banking or work suggested by strangers on unverified websites, avoid downloading files sent by strangers on the Internet, it may be malmware or viruses.