Posts Tagged ‘Password Security’

Passwords, personal stuff, and protection

Saturday, February 4th, 2012

It has happened again. It’s happened several times already to others.

It Can Happen To You.

Really.

It has happened to me, too. Not too long ago, someone got my gmail password. Not easy to do. I was lucky though. I caught it quickly, and fixed it, but it was scary, and embarrassing, and it made me angry.

Your Twitter, Facebook, email password can be stolen. With that information people can contact all of your friends, pretending to be you.

That’s bad. That’s not the worst part though.

Why are they contacting them?

To get them to visit sites that help them earn money, deliver viruses, or worse, steal your friends’ personal information.

Please take your password security seriously.

Quick tips:

  1. Make it at least 8 characters long.
  2. Use letters, numbers, some capital letters, some lower case, or special characters if possible. Something like 8FiU4#29P
  3. Don’t use words of any kind, not English, not Japanese, not any thing that is actually a word.
  4. Don’t use personal information – birthday, student number etc – yours or other family members, friends etc
  5. Change it regularly.

Try putting together a sentence to help you to remember your password.

IHb2TKDc9Xs

I Have been 2 ToKyo Disney c 9 Xs

If you have problems with your password, or accounts, always be sure to check that your contact email address is still set to your address. (hackers/thieves often change that address so they can just click the Lost Password button after you change it and they (not you) get sent the new password, and your are locked out again)

It can happen to you.

I said that already.

But, it’s important. It’s inconvenient, yes, but not as inconvenient as having your account broken into…

Do it now, okay?

Have questions? Just ask. I’m happy to help if I can.