As we gather for the holidays, it’s a good time to review your own back ups and security but when we connect with our parents and grandparents, it’s also a good time to check theirs’s! Here are some tips to keep your data safe and your devices secure this holiday season!
1. If you don’t have your parents’ iPhone PIN code, it is a good idea to get it. You’ll want to be able to use their phone for banking or to get two-factor authentication codes if something happens to them.
2. Set yourself up as a Legacy Contact on your parent’s iPhone. That way you can use the token they sent you to unlock their iCloud if anything heppens to them. It’s probably a good idea to know their iCloud passwords anyways, also Gmail or Outlook.
3. If you’re traveling for the holidays, try to keep your Mac gear out of sight if you’re not taking it with you! If you are taking your Mac laptop with you, leave your Time Machine drive behind, but also out of sight. It might be a good idea to slip it into a Ziploc bag! If you have a desktop computer, unplug it from the wall while you’re away and disconnect Ethernet if that is attached, and the same goes for your Time Machine, put it out of sight.
4. When we gather for the holidays, these are special moments, so if you have an iPhone and are taking lots of photos before you leave, make sure to back up your Thanksgiving photos to iCloud. Even if you’re not connected to Wi-Fi, you can usually force a cellular data backup.
5. When you return home, check your photos to make sure they’re backed up. You should be doing two to three checkups on your backups each year, and the holidays are a good time to do that!
6. If the kids are home from college and you have a Time Machine backup, they can share your hard drive while they’re home. The closer they are to graduating in my experience, the greater the chance for data loss. If you’re doing a master’s thesis or a PhD, it really needs to be backed up FIVE different ways.
7. The holidays are a great time to transfer devices from one family member to another, whether it’s from a parent to a child or from you to your parents. Ensure that your data has been successfully transferred to your new device and that you’ve had some time to use it, usually at least a few days, then erase the old Mac Once you’ve requested an “erase” on a Mac, the data is gone!
8. Most people have two-factor authentication enabled for their banking, brokerage, and retirement accounts. However, if your parents haven’t enabled 2FA, now is a good time to do so!
9. Remind your older relatives to never click on links in text or email messages that prompt them to act immediately. Also, my three largest hacks that have happened recently have all occurred to older individuals who also own a businesses so make sure the business banking is also secure.
10. This is probably the saddest pro tip I have, but if someone passes away or they are no longer able to use their iPhone don’t turn off their phone service right away. This is a common mistake, when families turn off the service, it prevents anyone from receiving two-factor authentication for banking, iCloud, or email which will be needed!
11. If you’re switching phone carriers or disabling an iPhone or erasing a iPhone, don’t forget about voicemails. When you turn off service to a phone, those voicemails can be impacted so make sure you’ve saved them.
12. If you’re using multiple Time Machine backups and you should! Consider leaving the oldest one at your parents’ house as an offsite backup.
13. If you’re going to stop in at your carrier’s retail store to get a new iPhone, I do not recommend allowing them to transfer the data and then leaving your old phone there as a trade-in without having time to check your data! See #7
14. If you have not done so already, use a SIM lock PIN Code to prevent your phone number from being cloned! The most recent hack that took place to one of my customers it was a SIM clone attack. The hackers already had thier bank password from another hack!
Just a heads-up: it’s important to chat with your parents or anyone else who might need to know about scams that involve gift cards, cryptocurrency, visiting a bank to withdraw cash, or anyone saying they need your help to catch the bad guys. Do not click on links in emails or texts. Do not call the bank at a number that they tell you to call! Always call the bank or credit card company by dialing the number on the back of your credit or debit card. Don’t call the number that appears on your credit card statement for “merchant”, always call the number on the back of your credit or debit card to dispute the charge. What for “call to action” language that is designed to upset you and make you act right away or something bad is going to happen.
I recently helped a customer who called a number from a fake PayPal email. The PayPal hackers then turned the hack into a bank hack. The customer lost over $17,000, and the hackers had the victim drive to their bank (the first bank did not have enough cash or maybe that is what they told the victim, which forced them to go to a second bank), giving them instructions to withdraw $17,000 in cash. The hackers coached the victim with answers when the bank questioned why the victim was withdrawing the money, suggesting it was for home repairs and the contractor wanted cash. The customer withdrew the $17,000, then went to a gas station with a crypto ATM and spent over an hour feeding $100 bills into it. In this case, the hacker used the fact that they had wired the victim (a former CPA) money and that they needed to pay them back. Also, be cautious of hackers who keep you on the phone. In this case, the person was on the phone with the hackers for over five hours, but $17,000 for five hours of work isn’t too bad for a day’s wages. That’s why hackers do this because they can make that kind of money every day.
I’m adding some of my You Tube videos that are related to this post.
