I’m a cyber-security expert – this is how I live to avoid getting hacked
Jake Moore could hack into your WhatsApp account in just a few clicks. He isn’t a scammer, but he knows how they operate. He has been a cybercrime expert for 13 years and, as the former Police Head of Digital Forensics, he has seen most of the tricks. These days though, the tricks are becoming increasingly advanced.
According to data from the accounting firm BDO, the amount of online fraud committed in the UK more than doubled in 2023, costing £2.3 billion. UK Finance reported that romance scams and ID theft are among the fastest-growing categories with a total of 1.4m cases recorded.
William Wragg, a senior Conservative MP, recently fell victim to a targeted online scam. He admitted to handing over the personal phone numbers of colleagues, after being blackmailed by someone on the dating app Grindr.
Moore advises companies on how to avoid these sorts of ever-changing security risks. It starts with simple, daily habits. “I find it interesting that the more I talk to people about basic cybersecurity, the more I realise that people either don’t know about it, or they just put it off,” says Moore. “It’s like doing your insurance. It is a bit boring.”
But by putting off these easy, everyday steps, phone users are at increasing risk of alarmingly complex scams, from fake calls by AI voice software to webcam hacking. The secret to safety is consistency: “It’s all about that balance between security and convenience.”
Here, Moore shares what he does regularly to make sure his personal life is safe from fraud, and online blackmail.
I never send texts
Moore would never send an SMS text; not even an iMessage. These are too vulnerable to hacking, as they can be intercepted by third-party software. “WhatsApp offers end-to-end encryption, which is an absolute must. It means that the communication cannot be intercepted by anyone, even Meta, which owns WhatsApp,” he says.
If a hacker can type into your texts, they can steal personal information needed to commit fraud.
“Going one step further. You can use platforms such as Signal. Everyone that I speak to in cybersecurity will use Signal for messaging as it is extremely privacy-focused,” says Moore. Both…
