keeping your data safe

With cyber-attacks increasing, it’s important to feel confident about what you can do to protect your personal information online. 

Here are some basic tips to keep your identity safe
 

• Update and backup your devices regularly.
• Set secure passwords or passphrases (a sequence of words) and don’t re-use these across other accounts or apps.
• Turn on multi-factor authentication wherever possible.
• Don’t share your personal, super, banking or credit card information with anyone (such as your PIN or password).
• Report cybercrime to ReportCyber and scams to Scamwatch. If you’ve experienced identity theft, contact IDCARE.

To learn more about the basics of how to keep yourself secure, go to cyber.gov.au/learn-basics.

You can also check out Keeping your super safe for super security tips.

Beware of scams

Scammers may send you a fake email or SMS with harmful links or malicious attachments. Content like this is designed to compromise or damage your device or steal sensitive information.

This practice is known as phishing for emails and SMishing for text messages.

You can identify these by:

• misspellings or images and graphics that don’t look quite right
• an unfamiliar sender address or phone number
• suspicious attachments
• requests for your personal information
• a sense of urgency — scammers may try to test your better judgment by stating that something needs your immediate attention.

Always be cautious as phishing and SMishing scams can at times be hard to detect.  

Learn more about scams targeting superannuation >