Securing my accounts and my peace of mind

by Donica Kaneshiro | Aug. 24, 2022

When my social media accounts were hacked recently, I wasn’t too concerned. Having someone spoof my account and copy my Facebook and Instagram contacts was creepy, but I am not an avid social media user and it seemed like a minor inconvenience.

However, I learned that the real risk comes from the information that I store and share on the platforms.

Would-be scammers were data mining my profile for the names of kids and pets, birthdays and addresses, to potentially use the info to gain access to other accounts.

Also, since many people use variations of the same passwords for many accounts, if thieves have one password, they have them all. Using that info to access to banking, billing and shopping accounts, allows thieves to glean even more information and do much more damage.

Fortunately, things didn’t get that far, but I did need to spend an evening downloading a password manager and updating the passwords on all my accounts.

It seems scam attempts are constant and fraud attempts are getting more sophisticated.

As a Hawaiian Electric employee, I often hear from friends and family when they receive a suspicious phone call or email claiming to be from the utility. I let them know that our company will never call and threaten immediate disconnection if payment isn’t made, send disconnection notices by text message or demand payment information via email.

We also don’t go door-to-door collecting past-due balances from customers or demand payment over the phone via prepaid debit cards or Bitcoin. (For more on fraud protection, visit our website.)

While there’s not much any of us can do to prevent a phishing attempt, my social media issues did serve as a reminder to update my security settings on all my accounts. Companies are constantly improving their settings to combat the latest security risks, but on some accounts, it’s up to the user to activate features such as multi-factor authentication (MFA).

In June, our company added MFA as an option for customers to further secure their accounts. Customers who sign up for the service through our Online Customer Service Center can choose to receive an automated voice call or text with an authentication code to use when logging in to their billing account.

It takes a few extra seconds to log in to my account with MFA, but it’ll save stress and worry if my information is ever compromised.

Donica Kaneshiro is a communications consultant at Hawaiian Electric Company.