Not a week goes by without news headlines declaring hackings or cybersecurity attacks of some sort. Whether these breaches include pictures of at least 200 celebrities, 100,000 pictures from  third-party Snapchat applications or the 76 million households affected by JPMorgan Chase’s recent hack, more and more of the places we thought were safe are becoming targets for future cyber attacks.

With all these security breaches, one thing is clear: millennials aren’t safe.  

We need to stop expecting companies to guarantee our security and privacy, and take it upon ourselves to do so.  

In some cases, there’s not much people can do. Companies that are attacked end up losing millions of people’s private information like their home and email addresses, phone numbers and, in some cases, their payment numbers.  This is nothing new. It has happened to stores like Target, Home Depot and, most recently, Kmart.

Customers who shop at certain stores shouldn’t have to expect to that their information will be stolen after their weekly grocery run to a supermarket.  

Companies should be held responsible for these hacks. But since — as of right now, at least — there’s no solid way to guarantee security from hackers, millennials need to take it upon themselves to make sure that they do their best to protect their private information.

According to a Sept. 5 Wired article, people need to follow three simple steps to avoid getting hacked.  

The first and most obvious step to take is avoid using the same password for everything.  Instead, download a password manager, which generates random encrypted passwords for all the accounts you have and allows you to use one main password to unlock the rest.  Another cautionary step is to set up a two-factor authentication, which forces you to type in a code sent to your device when you are signing in from a foreign location or different device.  

Syracuse University is also taking similar precautionary measures by mandating that students change their SU NetID passwords at least once a year, starting on Nov. 3.

As for security issues with Snapchat, the app itself seems to guarantee privacy by making its pictures and chat messages self-destruct in a certain time period. But hackers were able to obtain many pictures through third-party apps that allow their users to save pictures instead of having them disappear forever.  So although hackers did not necessarily attack Snapchat’s servers, they did obtain the pictures another way and millennials should be wary of apps that might not have as strong of a defense system.

Some have argued that nude photo leaks from Snapchat or any other platform are the senders’ fault. I am not blaming people who had their photos stolen from them. Hackers should have never done that in the first place. But since they have, millennials must take appropriate measures to avoid falling into these traps until companies are able to develop airtight security measures.

Corporations that put their customers’ information at risk must take necessary steps to secure that information. Until they do, we can’t always stop hackers from gaining access to our personal accounts — but we can take appropriate and cautionary steps to decrease the likelihood of these cyber attacks happening to us individually.  

Tamara Rasamny is an international relations and newspaper and online journalism dual major. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at twrasamn@syr.edu and followed on Twitter @Tam_Rasamny.

Published on October 22, 2014 at 12:01 am