Cybersecurity & Websites for Artists

Twice this week I’ve seen friends and fellow artists get hacked on their social media accounts. Over a year ago, the Art School Blog was also hacked.

The world of artist websites can be tricky for those of us who aren’t computer savvy or web coders. But, it’s time to talk about a few best practices that all artists can easily do to prevent these issues from happening.

This week’s blog post outlines a few basics to help understand security and to help keep hackers and scammers out. 

Https VS. Http – the difference is just an “s” but it offers a whole line of security defense for your website. The “s” on the https means the website is secure. Secure your website because it is only a matter of time before you get hacked. When setting up a website or online portfolio make sure your site is secure, get help from a web coder who can help you with this feature if you don’t know how to set this up. 

Fun fact: The Art School Blog was once hacked due to this very reason! Don’t give hackers and spammers and opportunity to shut down your art website, portfolio, blog, or business site. 

Updates: Keep your software, apps, and plugins up to date. I use to not do this because sometimes the apps didn’t work right after installing due to a bug in the update and also thinking my devices were slowly dying as the software surpassed the capacity of the device but after cleaning up a hack, it’s worth a possible bug or needing to buy future devices in the distant distant future. Updates are meant to close loopholes that hackers have broken through. Updates are mean to fix problems that currently exist in the software.  

Use a Password Manager: Save and manage your passwords in a password manager. This is safer than writing them down or saving them in a word doc on your computer (like we all do). A good password manager is Last Pass but you can find many password managers online. Use one that’s easy to manage and access rather than adds another layer of difficulty to your security processes. 

Email Art Scam: These are very popular and artists continually get lured to a scammer through a potential art sale! I have written extensively in a few other blog posts because there are definitely red flags and patterns to these scammer emails. It’s easy to get fooled by art email scams because you are excited by the potential of a sale. 

Report & Communicate: Report any fishy activity to your friends and colleagues that is happening with their accounts. This includes strange behavior such as spam emails from your contacts, asking for money, newly opened social media accounts. Chances are that they are hacked and do not even know about it.