Our May 3rd Speaker was our very own Marcel Lalonde, talking to us about how to avoid scams either through our phones or email, which has now gone far beyond scam artists knocking on our door.
A man on a mission: a tale of woe, then redemption – by Terry Kelly
Marcel Lalonde
Once upon a time there was a man named Marcel. He was a gentle man, a happy man. He loved to go to work. Every day. (Picture Jimmy Stewart in a 1950’s movie, if you will.) Everyone in the community knew him as the man with the perpetual smile, the ever-ready joke. Then, Marcel’s dreamlike world exploded.
He was hacked! The 50’s had become the 21st century in an instant! But, he survived the 5 stages of grief, emerging as a man on a mission.
In Marcel’s presentation to the NW Bay Branch of Probus, he was clear: he’s no expert in IT. Au contraire! He’s a retired veterinarian from Casselman, in eastern Ontario – halfway between Ottawa and Montreal, with an ever-busy Horton’s nourishing the community, 24-hours a day. He just wanted to share his story so others – his friends in Probus – could be aware of how vulnerable he was then, and they are now.
His intent was twofold: inform and motivate. And he succeeded in a big way!
He reminded us that these days, whether we like it or not, we HAVE to use the internet to digitally function – we really have no choice. We use the internet to communicate, become informed, conduct transactions, develop and maintain relationships, and generally, just entertain ourselves. (Did you know that the average US household has 23 devices? Nor did I.)
Meanwhile, hackers have upped their game, using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to entice us to make that one small misstep on any one of those 23 devices: an action that, in an instant, has the potential to change our lives forever. That small misstep is spelt ‘C-L-I-C-K’.
And with that one, small digital reflex (digital as in ‘finger’) we open ourselves to an unsolicited, invisible, potentially malevolent digital visitor (digital as in ‘data harvester’), who may be a broker for clients working the world wide web, or worse, for the ‘Bad Guys’ on the deep, dark web.
Marcel touched on our key areas of vulnerability, but gave us hope that we can protect ourselves, often by taking just a few, simple steps.
|
VULNERABILITY |
EXAMPLES OF MITIGATION |
|
E-mail accounts |
Make strong passwords, change them regularly, use 2FA* |
|
Cell phones |
Protect your SIM card; apply a data block |
|
Debit & credit cards |
Use ONLY secure sites (those with the prefix ‘HTTPS’) |
|
Facebook accounts |
Remove credit card & phone # information; never use ‘text’ to send authentication codes |
* For further understanding of some of the technical terms in this table, please consider joining the Special Interest Group (SIG) described immediately below.
Marcel knew there wasn’t time in his presentation to cover all the lessons he had learned. Nor could he profess to be on top of all the changes that take place daily in the dynamic world of 21st century IT. But he did think there just might be sufficient interest in our Probus community to form a Special Interest Group (SIG), one in which we could learn from our digital experiences.
If you are one of those 38 people who attended the May 3 meeting, or if you couldn’t make it but feel you would gain from the experience of others, please consider signing up using the form below:
