Blog

October was the month of cybersecurity awareness. This year, the theme highlighted the importance of everyone being aware of protecting themselves and others while online. Essentially important is knowing how to safeguard your identity data when browsing on the internet. Your online identity consists mostly of information such as Name, Date of birth, age, place of residence, mobile number and emails, which are commonly required when completing web-based account opening forms. Your personal information in the wrong hands could lead to digital identity theft. 

Digital Identity theft occurs when someone claims to be someone they are not, for countless number of reasons but mostly for monetary gain. Digital Identity theft occurs when someone gathers your personal information and uses it to create a profile and pretends to be you online. Most times, we tend to give away our personal information without considering the sensitivity or privacy of the information. 

We tend to post birthdays, age, and other personal information online or allow applications access to information stored on our mobile devices. 

To help safeguard and maintain privacy of your identity information, practice the following: 

1. Do not share your personal information online (birthdate, NID number, card details, passport number, etc)
2. Create strong and different passwords for your online account or use a single sign-on for multiple accounts and create one strong password with multi factor authentication. 
3. When installing apps on your phone, always check what information you are asked to give access. 

Check out the following online resources to help you safeguard your digital identity : 

1) Impersonating someone else and using their identity for fraudulent activities is a crime in Papua New Guinea – Criminal Code Act 2016 (No. 35 of 2016);

2) https://www.getsafeonline.org.pg/personal/articles/safeguarding-identity/;

3) https://www.pngcert.org.pg/common-threats/online-identity-theft/.