The video game industry is growing every year, setting new records every time and reaching more and more people. The Game Generation, which is held by the Entertainment Software Association, claims that “one-third of the world’s population plays video games on a regular basis”.
In today’s reality, video games are a delightful escape into worlds of fantasy, sports, and action, providing children and adults with hours or even days of virtual adventures.
A few years back, The COVID-19 outbreak is causing people to spend more time in their homes. With the world still implementing physical and social distancing restrictions, it’s not surprising that game usage has increased by 75 percent.
It is undeniable that playing games is a fun activity to do. However, you still have to be careful, especially when you play online games.
This is because playing online games can pose several risks that must be watched out for, such as malware, viruses, identity theft, doxing, and many more. Therefore, it is important to take security measures in advance to prevent you from being exposed to such risks.
The Rising Cases of Cyber Threats
Online game players please be careful. The reason is, recently encountered a cyber attack that is specifically targeting gamers. Yes, according to data from Kaspersky Security Network (KSN), every day there are at least 7 thousand attempts to infect gamers around the world.
When it comes to games, malicious users try to steal avatars and in-game items and then resell these virtual items for real money. For online banking, cybercriminals try to steal money directly from the bank account in question.
Various types of attacks are regularly launched against gamers, but the most common are attacks based on social engineering, especially phishing. For example, cybercriminals use well-known names in the gaming world and try to lure gamers into their fake sites in order to get registered game account passwords. This is one tactic that is often used.
In 2012 alone, Kaspersky Lab experts logged 15 million attempts to open a phishing site designed to look like the page of one of the biggest online game developers. But in fact, there are about 50 thousand redirect attempts to phishing sites every day.
Threats targeting gamers are found all over the world but, of course, are not found in equal numbers because the number of threats correlates with the number of active players present in different countries.
Seeing how concerning the whole situation is, gamers should need a better understanding of the safety importance. The least effort you can do is to install a VPN. You won’t think about gaming VPN until you get hit with a DDoS attack, which is really dangerous. So before anything bad happens to you, set up your protection to have your device more protected with VPN.
How to Protect Yourself Better
While online games sure sound fun and exciting, we can’t deny the fact that the interconnection really opens up the risk of cybersecurity. Hackers may sneak into the system by exploiting the vulnerabilities and using malicious sites to “catch” the targets.
They would often trick users to download certain files from their sites, causing the malware to be installed from the inside. It might happen without the user’s knowledge, of course. Aside from installing questionable apps, hackers could also trick gamers into submitting their personal credentials, like emails, phone numbers, or even addresses.
With all this information, hackers can easily get your accounts, each of them that’s connected to your personal data.
So, whether you’re ready or not, you have to be more prepared against all the bad possibilities. Here are a few things you can do:
1. Change your passwords regularly
The first thing you want to do is to regularly change your passwords. Do it at least once a year, or a month if you feel like it. Changing your passwords will make it hard for hackers to detect them as they will continuously be changed.
That way, you can be more secure although you’ve been using a certain app for years. If you’re having a hard time keeping up with all the changed passwords, do yourself a favor by installing a password manager app which you can get for your mobile phone.
2. Only Download Games from Reputable Sources
We know that many gamers are still using piracy sites to download their beloved games. However, we advise you to do the contrary. Instead of visiting those questionable sites, it’s much better if you download the game legally from reputable game digital distribution platforms.
If you really worry about the price, you can always depend on the discounts, which will be given on special dates. So if you really want to buy something, make a wishlist, and once you finally receive the notification about the price drop, buy it right away.
3. All Those Free Offers Are Not Real
Gamers who have a limited budget would often hunt the free offers given by several websites. Free gifts like this are usually offered on third-party websites that usually have a lot of ads, which you can easily misclick. Most of the time, these free offers are nothing but a gimmick to bring people in.
There’s no certain reward to obtain as users will continuously click anything just to finish the objectives. So, rather than spending much of your time doing the tasks, it’s better for you to just save some money to buy a game legally. It’ll be worth it.
