This week we take a look at how malicious hackers are influencing the U.S. Presidential election. And in a way that threatens your personal finances.
Let’s jump right in:
The Story
Every day for the last 2 weeks, a secretive “journalist” organization has released a collection of private emails from a key figure in Hillary Clinton’s Presidential campaign.
The intent is presumably to influence the election and try to indirectly “choose” our next President.
But that’s not the only scary part…
The method used to infiltrate Secretary Clinton’s campaign is extremely common.
It’s what hackers use to break into the financial accounts of unsuspecting citizens every single day.
And they’re getting away with billions of dollars.
Key Details
John Podesta is Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Campaign Chair.
The cybersecurity firm, SecureWorks, says it has confirmed that Podesta was tricked into entering his account details on a fake Gmail login page.
So instead of logging into Gmail, he mistakenly handed his password over to hackers.
This gave the hackers access to all of Podesta’s past emails going back years — including emails giving a behind-the-scenes look at the Clinton campaign. And now Wikileaks is publishing these emails for all to see.
This type of attack is called “Spear phishing,” and according to the FBI, is an easy way to take control of your financial accounts.
Gordon Snow, the Assistant Director of the FBI’s Cyber Division, says:
“In these instances, cyber crime is easily committed by exploiting the system users, rather than the systems themselves.”
The Bigger Picture
Hackers seem to be everywhere these days — from your wallet to your favorite website to your politics.
Just last week, several major websites were shut down by hackers for up to 2 hours, including Amazon, Twitter, Netflix, Spotify, The New York Times, Paypal and more.
Target is paying $10 million to customers who used the store’s compromised payment systems in 2013, inadvertently giving hackers their credit card numbers and personal information.
And the fallout of that cyber attack is with us every day. If you’ve been inserting your new “chip” credit card at stores, it’s because credit card companies feel these new cards are less vulnerable to Target-style attacks.
The critical warning is, you have to be proactive with your cybersecurity these days.
If a major U.S. Presidential campaign can have its online accounts infiltrated, then it can happen to anyone.
The threat is real to your email accounts, your financial accounts and even the life of your business.
Winners and Losers
Politically, it’s too early to say if there will be any losers as a result of John Podesta’s stolen emails.
Will it affect Podesta’s career or cost Hillary votes? Maybe, but ultimately the real losers are those who don’t take action to protect themselves from cybersecurity risks.
More than 70,000 new cybersecurity threats are discovered each day.
And according to California State Senator Ben Allen, 13.1 million consumers lost an estimated $15 billion in 2015 alone due to identity fraud. That’s over $41 million per day.
Being proactive is essential.
So who are the winners?
The obvious winners are those who learn from John Podesta’s mistake and never click a link to go to your email, bank, credit union or other financial institution’s login page.
Instead, it’s best to manually type the URL into your browser’s address bar.
What To Do Next
If you want to proactively protect yourself from cyber threats, here’s a 3 step action plan:
- Never use the same password for more than one site.
- If you’re using anything like “123456” or “password” as your password — the 1st and 4th most common passwords respectively — change them ASAP.
- Download our free Guide to Cybersecurity and Your Money to discover more ways to protect yourself from hackers.
That’s it for this week.
Build the life you love,
The Builders at Wealth Factory
What is Living Wealthy Weekly?
Each week we share timely trends, news stories, and current events that affect your life. We help you see the impact, personally and socially, and give you possible solutions to avoid any negative effects. We also give you additional links and resources if you want to investigate further. The purpose is not to be the last word on any topic. Rather it’s to help us all stay informed of what’s going on in the world without letting those events negatively impact your lifestyle. Our goal is to help us all live richer, fuller lives from a position of financial strength. This allows you to weather economic hard times, and seize whatever new opportunities arise in our changing world.
