We talk about security with technology, but do we really pay attention to the best practices? Are we doing everything we can to protect both ourselves and our clients?
WARNING: Don't read this article unless you are ready to get super paranoid about your cyber security! (hint: you should ALL read this article by the FBI and get very careful about your passwords) https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/cyber
Want to test your password security? Try this amazing little tool: https://www.security.org/how-secure-is-my-password/ (My work password would take 400 years to be cracked...just saying)
The good news: Some good common sense support documentation from CNET https://www.cnet.com/how-to/the-guide-to-password-security-and-why-you-should-care/
TRANSCRIPT:
What’s going on you guys; it’s Ken Perry from the Knowledge Coop and this is your Wednesday Update for this week. I am in Houston, Texas; it is very hot. We’re down here rolling out a brand new company into the Knowledge Coop; they’re going to be using the Knowledge Coop as their internal communications system. Very excited.
But a quick update for you—and this came out earlier this year but I was just reading about it and I don’t know that anybody heard about it, so here goes. It’s a new hacker scam for real estate. The way that it works is hackers are hacking into real estate agents’ accounts and title people’s accounts and just random people’s accounts. And what they’re looking for is transactions that are going to be closing soon. And then what they do is they get as much information as they can from the real estate agent’s email address and they send an email to the borrower posing as either the realtor or posing as their title company. And that email requests information and usually requests a wire where they say “hey, there’s an update to your loan, we need to now have you send us more money” and they ask the borrower to send their money to them—it goes directly to the hacker’s account. So, what you want to make sure you’re doing is telling all consumers who are going to be buying a house what email they should be receiving emails from. Tell them to be on alert to make sure they do not reply or send wiring instructions or send money to anybody during the transaction except for maybe the title company and maybe you’ve got a way they can do that. But just inform your consumers and educate them so that they don’t lose everything by sending their money to somebody who isn’t real or that’s a hacker.
Also, real estate agents, do not use the same password on your email address in your email account that you use on everything else. Make sure you’re being super smart about how you’re setting up your email passwords and change them frequently so that this can’t happen or that it’s rougher and it’s tougher for them to get that information.
So, there you go. Again, from Houston, Texas, I will see you guys next week. That’s my update for this week; you guys have a great one.
The Reviews Are In // The Secret Is Out