If increasing prize pools and top players’ celebrity status are anything to go by, competitive gaming is thriving. Yet the pursuit’s online nature and global popularity come with privacy challenges. Here’s how to strive towards your place among gaming’s greats without dropping the ball when it comes to your online privacy and security.
Separate Your Gaming & Personal Identities
Your tag is your gamer identity, the name under which you win tournaments and which fans chant. Keeping it that way ensures your real-world identity remains private and protected. Ninja and Shroud might have bounced back from their doxing ordeals, but not everyone is so lucky.
To save yourself from getting doxed, start by creating separate socials that have no ties to your real-world identity. It’s easier to stay in character if you interact with followers while making it harder to establish a connection between the two. You’ll also want to be smart about what you post on both account types and set your real-world socials to private to limit data sharing.
A small digital footprint goes a long way, but you might not even realize how much personal data—photos, posts, and other details—are already online. In fact, doxing yourself before someone else does can be a smart move. By doing so, you can remove unwanted content from your social media or use a data removal service to prevent it from appearing on people finder sites and search results. This is also the same approach to take if you’ve ever wondered how to stop getting spam emails.
Hackproof Your Gaming-Related Accounts
The best gamers attract copycats, so safeguarding your profiles and game accounts is a top priority. Their unique IDs tell everyone you’re the real deal, not to mention how they hold all your records and achievements.
A solid password is the crucial first step. Use long, complicated passwords for each account, making sure they’re not duplicates or too similar. A password manager will help, especially if you want to protect all your accounts with unique credentials quickly and efficiently.
Double account security up with two-factor authentication so no one who gets a hold of your password can hack the account. Most launchers have a built-in option, but you can also set 2FA up in your password manager.
Watch Out for Scams
Rising gaming stardom could make you a target for scams. It’s easy to recognize phishing attempts and social engineering aimed at ordinary gamers since the senders will often pose as a popular gaming company and hope they’ll give up their account details or open attached malware.
However, the more prominent you get, the greater the chance someone will try to scam you through fake sponsorships or other, more refined attempts. Part of staying safe at this level is learning to recognize and protect yourself from more sophisticated attacks.
If you don’t want to fall for a scam, stay alert for warning signs like offers that sound too good to be true, unexpected emails or messages, or requests for personal information. Always double-check the legitimacy of any sponsorships or partnerships before sharing your details. If something feels off, trust your instincts and do some research on the sender to confirm it’s real. Taking a few extra moments to verify such details can save you from a lot of trouble later.
Protect Your Network
Even with the above precautions, you’re still not immune from snooping. Public Wi-Fi and similar open networks are the worst offenders since a hacker monitoring them can intercept your traffic and even steal any account credentials or credit card info as you type it in. While it’s more secure, your home network still isn’t private since your ISP and advertisers can track your IP address and online whereabouts.
The solution? A reputable VPN. You can use the VPN’s split tunneling feature to enjoy private browsing and encrypted online communication without impacting ping or game performance. It’s also possible to connect to a VPN server that’s closer to the host than you are, potentially reducing latency and giving you an edge.
Conclusion
Weak cybersecurity is the last thing you want standing between yourself and competitive gaming greatness. Luckily, straightforward practices like keeping your identity, accounts, and networks safe boost your cyber defenses without being a hassle.