The North West Regional Organised Crime Unit is a collaboration of the six police forces in the north west. Cumbria Constabulary, Cheshire Police, Greater Manchester Police, Lancashire Constabulary, Merseyside Police and North Wales Police. Sadly, there’s always a lot of incorrect information, and plenty of scams going around.
The National Cyber Security Centre and ActionFraud websites can provide you with much more information. But please try to keep safe online.
Avoid Scams and Stay Safe
Online criminals are using an increasing number of ways to target businesses and individuals.
They use various ‘hooks’ to lure us into phishing emails and fake websites, to get malware and viruses onto our devices. To steal credentials, access webcams, commit fraud and hold us to ransom.
Some examples are below, and the advice is always the same.
- Think before you click
- Go to the organisations’ genuine website
- Check the detail of the URL or website address
- Avoid clicking on links on emails and text messages
- Don’t rush to give away personal details
- Don’t assume everything you receive is genuine
As always, please report any online crimes and fraud to ActionFraud – we recommend reporting by phone. Especially Ransomware and Denial of Service attacks. They are classed as live cyber crimes.
Ransomware is one of the biggest concerns for businesses. The National Cyber Security Centre has a range of resources to explain what it is, how to protect yourself and what to do if you are infected.
Important resources to help you stay safer online
There are some really important resources available from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) which are vital for any business to help stay safe online.
They include:
- guidance on working from home,
- a scam involving fake maps with coronavirus outbreaks which puts malware on your machine,
- and guidance on updating anti-virus and malware.
BE CAREFUL WITH YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA
It’s going to be our salvation during these unusual circumstances. But that doesn’t mean you can let your guard down. You MUST still be careful and watch out for scams, hacks and generally bad stuff.
Here’s a bit of advice from Visit Fylde Coast. We are by no means experts at cyber security – this is basic advice as we know it.
- DON’T just click on anything and everything. If it looks odd it probably is.
- PLEASE stop sending videos and memes in messenger.
That’s how viruses spread online. We’ve got enough trouble with the real life one! - ACCEPT friend requests ONLY from people who you know in real life
- CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD if you have any trouble, anything odd happens to your account, or people get messages that you didn’t send.
- PASSWORDS should be a long combination of letters, capitals, numbers and characters like £!&
- DO NOT use the same password for multiple websites! Ideally you should have a different one for every site you log on to.
While you’re here…
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