Cyber Security: NITDA warns about identity theft

The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has warned the general public to be conscious of cyber criminals, who indulge in Identity theft.

Mrs Hadiza Umar, Head, Corporate Affairs and External Relations of NITDA gave the warning in a statement in Abuja recently.

Umar said the agency is giving the warning as October is nationally marked as Cyber Security Awareness Month.

She explained that Identity theft involves committing fraud by assuming another person’s identity.

“The main objective of this kind of fraud is to obtain enough personally identifiable information about a victim so that the attacker can use it to conduct fraud in their name.

“The stolen information can be used for various fraudulent activities such as taking over the victim’s accounts, applying for loans in their name, accessing medical services, defrauding family and friends and a whole lot more,” she said.

Umar advised members of the public to limit the amount of personal information shared on their social networks like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, among others.

She advised further that people should use only strong and unique passwords across their online accounts and enable multi-factor authentication where possible.

“Ensure you visit only websites that are secured, and avoid using public WiFi to carry out sensitive transactions and other processes that require logging into an account.

“Never provide corporate or personal data such as date of birth, mother’s maiden name, or National Identification Number to unsolicited callers, via email or text message,” she advised.

Umar advised that the public should reach out to the Computer Emergency Readiness Response Team (CERRT) of the agency for enquiries.

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