In an age in which we work, shop and socialise on the internet, we are leaving more information in cyberspace than ever — and ourselves terrifyingly exposed to online fraud. Indeed there were six million cybercrimes in Britain in 2016 — more than any type of crime in the ‘real world’.
To find out just how much information is out there about me — and how vulnerable I am to being defrauded — I enlisted the help of cybersecurity expert Luke Potter.
I gave him only my name and the instruction not to use any information that is online because of my work as a journalist. The results of his investigation are enough to make anyone think twice before logging on ...
MY BANK PASSWORD REVEALED IN HOURS
Terrifyingly, it takes Luke just hours to track down the most valuable of all my online information — my bank account password. I thought I’d done everything I could to protect myself from cybercrime by using online passwords which include a complex combination of letters and numbers, rather than something obvious such as my mother’s maiden name.
But I am shocked to discover the majority of my passwords are available online to anyone with an ounce of technical know-how. Unbeknown to me, over the past nine years my passwords for four separate websites — software company Adobe, professional networking site LinkedIn, pop star Lady Gaga’s fan page and social media website Myspace — have been stolen by hackers.
Worryingly, my passwords have ended up on a website on which information is traded by criminals.
