In the last decade, gaming has blossomed into a widely-embraced, mainstream activity, so many like to spend their free time playing games. In addition to everything, one of the most fascinating aspects of it is how it connects generations and forms new friendships. It is important that you know how you can remain safe while remaining online.
With that being said, gaming has a darker side to it. Once an activity becomes popular, it attracts hackers’ attention, the kind who love stealing your data, spying on you, and compromising your devices. If you want to stay safe, recognizing the threats that prey on gamers is the first thing you’ll need to learn, followed by the respective solutions.
So do yourself a favor and familiarize yourself with the following:
- Phishing
Although gaming is considered by many to be an escape into an alternative reality, cyber threats such as phishing are ever-present. To give a practical example, a hacker could create a fake login page and bait you into visiting it through in-game chat or even via gaming forums.
To entice you to go along with their narrative and do their bidding, they may try to come up with a seemingly urgent reason or offer in-game rewards. Don’t fall for it! The only objective behind these fraudulent forms is harvesting your login credentials, so they can proceed to steal your account and any valuable items you’re storing inside.
- Malware
Have you ever been tempted to gain an edge over your competition through cheating or perhaps even hacking the game yourself? If you download hacks from third-party websites, getting your account banned could be the least of your worries, as you’re making yourself wide open to a potential malware infection. This could be ransomware, password-stealers, etc.
Don’t be fooled into thinking that seemingly innocent mods like tile packs, maps, or HUD tweaks are free of it either. Unless you want to take the risk, stick to officially-approved game content only.
- Unauthorized transactions
Expanding on the point made above, have you ever purchased in-game currency through a third-party website and paid for it with real money? In the MMORPG sphere, such websites are known as the gold exchanges. Here, the obvious risk is not receiving the gold you’ve purchased, so you have to trust the other person to deliver on their promises. But if you pay with your credit card, you’re putting yourself at risk of having your credit card data stolen. If this sounds like you and you’re noticing any unauthorized transactions in your credit card history, do not hesitate to alert the local authorities.
- Oversharing
Not everyone friendly toward you has your best intentions at heart. This includes your online gaming buddies because you don’t know them in real life. Therefore, being too liberal with what you reveal about yourself online could get you into all sorts of trouble. For instance, revealing your full name and physical address could incite people to stalk or otherwise harass you.
What you can do to stay safe online
To stay safe online, common sense and solid reasoning will get you far. But no matter what you do, always keep the following in mind:
- Keep 2FA enabled. The more important the account, the more this applies. In essence, what the 2FA mechanism does is that it sends you an automatically generated code every time someone attempts to access your account. So even if your login credentials get stolen, a hacker would need to access your smartphone as well if they wanted to get in.
- Come up with stronger passwords. Have them contain numbers, special symbols, and capital letters. Never share them with anyone and store them in a safe place. If you can’t remember them, it’s better to use a password manager than dumbing them down on purpose only for the sake of making them easier on your memory.
- Antivirus is your friend. Unless you’re tracking every file that gets sent to you, it’s impossible to know if some of them contain any viruses or not. But the good news is that most modern antiviruses will do that automatically for you (if they don’t, a quick scan now and then should be more than enough to ensure a reasonable amount of safety).
- Use a VPN whenever you’re using public Wi-Fi and transferring sensitive data. That way, no one will be able to spy on what you send through that connection and track your online activity. As a bonus, due to a VPN’s IP-changing nature, it can also help you net a nice discount on a video game by making it appear as though you’re visiting from another country or region. Also, if certain game content’s availability is locked to a certain region, it will help you bypass the limitations. You can check what is a VPN in the video below:
- Don’t click on any links someone sends you in-game. Period. On a similar note, be careful what you download. Playing the game as it’s meant to be played (without any unethical shortcuts) may take a long time, but at the end of the day, you’ll know that you’ve earned it. Plus, you’ll steer clear of malware.
Conclusion
Online gaming is easy to get lost in and forget your surroundings but never forsake your vigilance however it’s what will keep you safe if you try to follow as much as these steps.