"You have zero privacy anyway," Scott McNealy, former CEO of Sun Microsystems on January 26, 1999 Unfortunately, he was correct, 20 years ago, 8 years before the iPhone tracked everything we do.
Recently, I experienced this myself, after applying for a new mortgage, I received a call a few hours later, from my current mortgage company asking if they could help.
I almost dropped the phone, until I realized that at some point during my refinance with them, I must have agreed to them monitoring my credit for that type of inquiry.
Another friend of mine posted to Facebook that she was deleting Facebook because while looking for vacations on her computer, suddenly she was seeing ads for the same places on her iPhone Facebook.
If you haven’t realized it yet, everything you do on the internet is being tracked, collected, stored, to predict your behavior and sell you stuff.
A realtor friend of mine told me about an email that was intercepted, wiring instructions changed and hundreds of thousands of dollars disappeared into the dark net. Litigation is ongoing because insurance doesn’t cover the loss.
Even in our business, my employees have received fake emails (THAT LOOK LIKE THEY CAME FROM ME) instructing my finance people to wire money to accounts.
If you don’t think it can happen to you...see this article:
http://www.healthcareitnews.com/slideshow/ransomware-see-hospitals-hit-2016?page=1
(also, don’t click links in emails...unless you know and trust the sender)
So...what can you do to protect yourself and your business?
1. Monitor your personal and business credit through one of the various services. 2. Talk to your insurance person to assess your “cyber” risk. 3. Establish a bitcoin account, so if you are hacked you’ve got one. (If you haven’t secured your business, you’re probably going to need it) 4. Talk to us about different security steps to protect your business.