Toolkit Articles

Our articles help educate you on ways to keep you, your data, and your devices safe.


Data Privacy Day 2020

Manage Your Privacy Settings: 1. Secure all devices, especially smartphones.

Smartphones are carried by virtually everyone and often they contain our most personal information. Whether iPhone or Android, research the best way to secure it for full privacy including options such as remote wipe.

2. Use a unique password for each site.

That way, if one of your passwords gets compromised, the others are still safe. Use complex passwords and never share them. Using multi-factor authentication (MFA) wherever possible will help protect you even more. Keep your university and personal...

Financial Phishing Attacks

October 11, 2021
Watch out for financial "spear phishing" emails.

These may look like they come from a supervisor or manager and request that you send funds, transfer money, provide banking information, buy gift cards, or provide something of value to the sender.

Spear phishing attacks have increased dramatically over the past few years as scammers get more sophisticated. UC employees have been targeted on multiple occasions. Scammers send realistic looking...

Watch out for suspicious solicitations for new bank account

October 4, 2021

UC has learned that names, Social Security numbers, and other personal information of some members of the UC community may have been used in attempts to open unauthorized bank accounts at financial institutions such as Chime and Go2Bank. Some of these UC community members are receiving emails from these institutions asking them to confirm a new account by clicking on a link in the email. It is unclear how personal information was obtained to open unauthorized accounts.

UC has been in touch with both Chime and Go2Bank, and both companies are currently cooperating with UC to...

Recognizing & Avoiding Job Scams

September 22, 2021
Are you on the lookout for flexible, part-time employment to help cover school expenses? If so, watch out for scams.

Between the COVID-19 pandemic and high unemployment rates, the pressure to find a job may create more pressure for you to find work quickly. UC Berkeley has received numerous reports of employment scams where the sender impersonates Berkeley professors, researchers, and/or university departments. Some scams are easy to spot but how do you know who to trust?

Start with these basic guidelines: Be skeptical. If a job...

Why Reusing Passwords is a Bad Idea

April 16, 2021

"I have a really great passphrase, it's long and easy to remember, so I use it on all my accounts."

Sound familiar? Why is it so hard for us to abandon this idea that reusing passphrases is a bad idea? Well, we're humans and humans tend to rationalize to confirm our decisions. "What are the chances that someone will get my password and compromise my account, I mean, will that really happen to me?" Well, it turns out it does - and more frequently that you might imagine.

According to...

Preventing Social Engineering Attacks

August 18, 2020
Social Engineering criminals focus their attention at attacking people as opposed to infrastructure. Social engineering begins with research; an attacker may look for publicly available information that they can use against you. These attacks can come in a variety of formats: email, voicemail, SMS messages, DMs, or via social media and attempt to prey on your respect for authority, courtesy, or trust.

Why Should We Care About Online Privacy?

January 20, 2020

With the California Consumer Privacy Act taking effect this year, data privacy will become a central issue for businesses in 2020. Consumers conduct much of their lives on the internet, yet few understand the critical issue of privacy and how their personal information is used, collected and shared by businesses. Your data can be stored indefinitely and used in both beneficial and unwelcome ways. Even seemingly innocuous information – such as your favorite restaurants or items you purchase can be used to make inferences about your socioeconomic status,...

Data Privacy and You

January 8, 2020
In honor of International Data Privacy Day, January 28

Data Privacy Day Logo

All of us exist in digital form on the Internet. When you're online you leave a trail of "digital exhaust" in the form of cookies, GPS data, social network posts, browser searches, and email exchanges, among others. Services that you don’t even use may have information about you. And once something is online, it can be there forever.

It is important to...

Tips to Protect Yourself While Online Shopping

November 12, 2019

Even outside the traditional "Holiday" season we find ourselves purchasing items online. And so, it's good to remember online shopping best practices year round. In addition to our holiday shopping tips, here are a few others to keep you safe while online shopping:

Unique account, unique password: Having separate passwords for every account helps to thwart cybercriminals. At a minimum, separate your work/University and personal accounts and make sure that your critical accounts...

Ho-Ho-Holiday Tips to Keep You Shopping Safe

November 6, 2019

Animals in lights

I love this time of year; the air gets crisp, the leaves start to turn, and I get to wear sweaters all the time. However, the thought of leaving the house to battle the crowds elicits panic level 12. Perhaps that's why online shopping is gaining even more popularity. An estimated 165.8 million people shopped between Thanksgiving Day and Cyber Monday in 2018!

Why not...

No peeking! Staying safe and private on Wi-Fi

September 6, 2019

Wi-Fi is great. Think about it, you pretty much carry an entire library and a direct line to anywhere in the world in your pocket. Nowadays many businesses offer Wi-Fi for their customers, so you can stay connected even while eating udon or waiting in line for toast.

But! That doesn’t mean it’s perfect. Using public Wi-Fi is sort of like doing, well, anything else in public: you want to be safe and not accidentally wander into trouble. Let’s talk about what you can do to protect yourself on Wi-Fi.

When you’re on public Wi-Fi, never access anything private. Accessing sports...

Up-to-date on updates: Keeping your software fresh

September 6, 2019

Software updates are sort of like exercise: Not everyone thinks about it, but everyone needs it, and they can make a big difference in keeping a system healthy. Let’s take a quick minute to talk about updates.

Updates help keep a piece of software or a system current. Because new threats are being developed all the time, manufacturers will send out fixes and updates to help protect their users from new threats — or just from problems they didn’t find when the software was first made. If you don't download and apply the update to fix the problem, you're basically leaving a door open...

Staying safe when shopping online

September 6, 2019

How easy is it to shop online? (Rhetorical question there.) It’s so convenient to be able to order anything you like and have it delivered right to your door. Unfortunately, that also means there’s more risk. Scammers and criminals can try to steal your information and money while you shop online.

The good news is that there are some easy things you can do to protect yourself and safely shop online. Let’s take a quick look at some tips:

Never do your shopping on public Wi-Fi networks. Seriously. Public Wi-Fi can have weak (or no) security and sending sensitive information like...

Double your privacy, double your fun

September 6, 2019

(Only those old enough to remember the Wrigley's doublemint gum commercials will get this title.)

“Multi-factor authentication” is a tech industry term for using different types of verification to get into an account. You do this daily with the 2-Step. The idea is that you use multiple things at the same time to really prove that you’re actually you. A password is one example of a factor; a fingerprint is another.

Multi-factor authentication makes it much harder for attackers to break into people’s accounts. If they have a password but not the other factor that they need,...

Don’t pass on strong passwords

September 6, 2019

Passwords! What a headache, am I right? Sometimes it seems like that in order to be safe, your password must contain letters, numbers, punctuation, bird noises, and at least one Egyptian hieroglyph.

But the truth is that it’s easier to create a long, strong, safe password than most people think. Let’s take a quick look at a few tips for making a password that will keep your account safe.

Use a passphrase instead of a password. Passphrases, or sentences, will always be longer than a single word (which is good, because government advice now suggests that passwords be...

Resurgence of Ransomware in Higher Ed

May 21, 2020

Ransomware is not new; but, it's been popping up more and more in higher ed. Each week brings news of colleges and universities that have fallen victim to ransomware attacks. Some hackers demand payment, while others steal personal data (to sell to identity thieves). Whatever the motives are, school systems around the country have been the targets of recent attacks.

Here are four things you can do to protect yourself: 1. Back it up. Daily.

Use a...

Securing Your Devices While Traveling

May 21, 2019
Stay safe while traveling by following this simple tips