How do I keep my account safe?
Here are some simple things you can do to keep your account safe.
- Choose a secure password and change it regularly.
- Do not write down or make any record of your password anywhere.
- Never give out your account details - MyOpinions will never ask you for your password, except when signing in. If anyone asks you for this information or if you receive an email asking you for this information, please report the incident as soon as possible.
- Do not share your personal information with others.
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How do I choose a secure password?
Choosing a secure password is easier than you think. Here are a few important things to remember:
- Do not choose a password based upon personal information like your name, birthday or other information that one could easily discover about you from such sources as searching the internet.
- Do not choose a password that is a word (English or otherwise) or a simple transformation of a word; e.g. putting a punctuation mark at the beginning or end of a word, converting the letter "l" to the digit "1", writing a word backwards, and so on.
- Do not choose an obvious password like 'password', '12345678' or 'qwerty'.
To choose a secure password use a combination of capital and lowercase letters, numbers, and standard symbols (! @ # $ % ^ & *), and be sure to make your password at least 7 characters long.
If you're completely stuck, try creating a password using this method:
- Make up a sentence that you can easily remember, e.g. I'd love to see a polar bear in Antarctica
- Now take the first letter of every word in the sentence, and include the punctuation. You can throw in extra punctuation, or turn numbers into digits for variety. The above example will become: I'l2sapb1A
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What is a phishing email?
A phishing email is a hoax email sent out by a spammer to leverage the good reputation of a company in order to get recipients to provide information or click on a link in the email.
- The email is written and designed so that it looks like it came from the target company.
- The From address can often be falsified, so even if the email comes from a myopinions.com.au email address, this is no guarantee that the email is genuine.
- The link within the email may appear to lead to MyOpinions, but the spammers can use clever ways to disguise the true destination of the link.
You can identify genuine MyOpinions emails using the checklist How to identify a genuine MyOpinions email.
Most hoax emails are poorly worded, and may contain spelling and grammatical errors.
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What should I do if I receive a phishing email?
If you have received a phishing/hoax email, you should delete the email from your inbox, and delete it again from your 'Deleted Items' folder.
If you clicked on the link within a hoax email, you should take the following precautions:
- Change the password on your MyOpinions account;
- Make sure your computer is up-to-date with the latest updates, patches, and security software;
- Scan your computer for viruses, trojans and spyware.
Unfortunately many large and reputable companies have been the target of these kinds of attacks recently. These include major banks and popular auction sites.
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How did a spammer get my MyOpinions email address?
Spammers use a variety of methods to collect email addresses for spamming. There are email address gatherers that collect email addresses from every possible source. They search in places such as web pages, newsgroups, domain owner listings, ICQ member listings, basically anywhere they can get email addresses.
But you may be asking how did the spammer know that you were a MyOpinions member? The answer is, it was sheer coincidence. With so many members around Australia, it is very likely that when a spammer sends an email to a list of email addresses obtained illegally from other sources, quite a large portion on that list are bound to be real MyOpinions members. It is just a coincidence that you are a MyOpinions member and you also received a spam/phishing email claiming to be from MyOpinions.
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