Debunking the Dark Web

The “Dark Web” is often portrayed as a scary place—one where your personal information and data is thought to be sold and shared illegally. In fact, there are several IT companies who provide dark web monitoring services marketed to monitor this corner of the internet for any personal or sensitive information that may be compromised. This is thought to help protect individuals and businesses from potential identify theft, fraud, or other malicious activities. 

While that sounds like a way to protect your information and create peace of mind, the concept is mostly a scare tactic to upsell services. In reality, while the dark web mostly deals with illegal activity, everyone’s email is already on the dark web—mostly because of marketing lists being sold to the highest bidder. 

In fact, most of the information captured about you and your business is done so in broad daylight. From social media use to shopping online, advertisers are constantly trying to get in front of you and utilize websites with billions of users to sell them your information. While the dark web can be an issue, for the average person or business, needing to pay additional monitoring services does very little to protect you and enables IT companies to capitalize on fear mongering for profit. 

So, what can you do then? Instead of investing in dark web monitoring, investing in a password manager (e.g., Keeper Security) can help ensure your data remains protected. Password managers monitor data breaches and leaks, informing you of when you need to update your information. Additionally, a password manager works via a browser extension to log and autofill any username and password combination you’ve used for a website, and can generate strong passwords based on different website requirements to avoid reusing passwords.  

To ensure you protect yourself further, it is also important to have malware and antivirus installed on your computer, avoid clicking on links from phishing emails, and back up all data offsite to the Cloud in case it becomes corrupted locally. All these cost-effective solutions combined can do more to protect you than investing in dark web monitoring. 

At BDK, Inc., we pride ourselves on remaining abreast of the latest technology and protocols to protect against data breaches and know how to help you recover your assets should an incident arise. Further, we believe in providing our customers with custom solutions that meet their business needs versus trying to upsell on the things they don’t. 

To learn more about how BDK, Inc. can help your business’ IT needs, contact us today!