How To Stay Safe While Gaming Online

 Online gaming requires you to interact with people you don’t know. And these people are from all over your region or even from all over the world. Subsequently, it’s important to protect yourself from any potentially malicious action. Because as you might imagine, not everyone follows the same moral code. Here are a few things that you can do.

Utilise A Username

When you play video games online, never use your real name. Construct a username that you like and simply utilize it as an alias. This will make it harder for people to target you in the rare instances in which you stand out in some way and someone with malicious intent might try to harm you financially, socially, or in any other way. Such events are extremely rare but it’s still a good practice to not put yourself in a dangerous situation by exposing private information about yourself.

When choosing a username, make sure you don’t link it in any way to your email, bank account, phone number, address, or family name. Anything that’s a bit too closely related to you is risky.

Never Share Private Information with Strangers

This is a more general principle that covers all of your online interactions with other players. So whether it’s competing, trading items, or other activities, unless you know the person well enough and find them trustworthy, do not share your private data with them.

Most of your teammates will be fleeting characters in your esports endeavours. The matchmaking system simply placed all of you in the same team for a single match. And the likelihood of ever encountering these people again is quite low, because of the huge number of players that compete at the same level. So there’s no reason for you to share sensitive information with them unless you become friends and play together all the time. In such a case, you should use Discord, Zoom, Skype or some other tool to communicate.

Be Wary Of Mods And Downloadable Content

Mods aren’t always safe. They are just like browser addons and can contain malicious software that can then see what you’re doing on your computer and what input you are entering when purchasing online. This is very dangerous, for obvious reasons. So you should always try to only use downloadable content from trustworthy sources and utilise a good antivirus to enhance your PC’s ability to protect itself against attacks.

Be Careful With Loot boxes And In-Game Purchases

As much as you can, try to stay away from loot boxes and games that use pay-to-win systems. The last thing you want is to get tricked into spending large amounts of money gambling online or buying things that you don’t need in a well-designed game.

Questions

If you have any questions about staying safe online please visit Netsafe; www.netsafe.org.nz/staying-safe-online/