Things You Can Do to Keep Your Passwords From Being Too Social

Did you know that you might have inadvertently helped a nefarious hacker get access to your email account, your online banking or your e-commerce site information? Let's face it, today we have passwords for everything and it is becoming more difficult to remember them all. So we either write them down on a piece of paper or we use the same password for everything. Uh oh.

Until very recently, Facebook and other social media sites did not encrypt the sign-on info you use to logon to your Facebook account. This means that someone who knew what they were doing could "sniff" the Internet traffic between your PC and the Facebook servers and plainly see your email and password. Now they have access to your Facebook account and they can act as you. While this in itself may be unnerving; the real damage has yet to occur. The hacker is aware that many people use the same password for multiple services so they then try to logon to your email account with the Facebook password. In some cases they are successful. Consider your own situation, would the hacker be successful? If he is, he isn't done yet.

Since the hacker now has access to your email, he'll scan for emails from your bank, Amazon, iTunes or other e-commerce sites and see if he can hack into them with the same password. The good news is most banks have stepped up their security for online banking. If they detect a PC trying to access your account that hasn't done so previously, they will ask certain enhanced security questions or will call you on the phone to insure it is really you trying to access the account.

But the damage isn't done in many cases. With access to your email account, the hacker can now use your email account to send spam. Or if sending spam is not his thing, access to your email can be sold to someone who is. Have you ever received email messages telling you that an email that was sent from your email account couldn't be delivered? Did you then try to sift through the gobbledygook that is part of the bounce message and determine you didn't send the email? If so, it is likely that your email account was hacked.

These scenarios may seem frightening but there are some easy things you can do to help prevent you from being a victim in the future.

Make sure your Facebook password is different from your email, banking or other e-commerce sites. This will minimize the damage that can be done if your Facebook account is hacked.

If you use Facebook, change your security settings to use Secure Browsing. You do this by going to the Account tab in the upper right of Facebook and select Account settings. In the Account Security section chose Secure Browsing. Also check one or both of the boxes to send you notice when a new computer or mobile device logs into your account. These changes will do two things.

• Secure browsing means everything that your browser sends to and receives from Facebook will be encrypted. Encrypted data is extremely difficult to hack. You can tell that you have a secure session because the address box in the top of your browser will say "https://www.facebook.com". Notice the "s" after http. The "s" means secure. Being secure means everything is encrypted so you may notice that pages load a bit slower. Also if you are into Facebook apps (FarmVille, Scrabble, etc.) they might not yet be https compatible so they might not work yet. Facebook is working on these issues and should address them soon.
  
  
• Sending an email when a new device accesses your account means you'll be notified if a new computer or mobile phone accesses your Facebook account. The first time you log into Facebook after selecting this option, you get a screen that asks you to name your computer. Give it a name that you'll recognize (i.e. Den Computer or Sally's Laptop).

The most important thing you can do is make your passwords hacker resilient. According to various web sites, some of the popular passwords that people use are 123456, 12345, 123456789, Password, iloveyou, password, princess, qwerty, abc123 and rocky. Any of these look familiar?

Hackers have tools to help them crack your password using the most popular passwords. If that doesn't work they use password generators that start trying various combinations. You can make their task much more difficult by creating a STRONG password which is at least 8 characters long, a combination of upper case and lower case letters with numbers and special characters ($, #, &, *!, <, etc.) Using these makes it more difficult for hackers but it also makes it harder for us to remember as well.

So here is a tip: think up a phrase you can remember. For example, "My birth place was Chicago and I was born in 1965". Now take the first letter of each word in the phrase MbpwCaIwbi1965 and you have created a strong password. Add a "!" or "$" at the beginning and/or end and your password is even stronger! While this is much more difficult to type in than 123456 it is even harder for a hacker.

It is important that you chose a phrase that you can remember so you don't have to write it down to remember it.

The most secure practice is to have a STRONG password for every site you visit but this can become quite unwieldy. Rather than having a single password for every site that needs one, I would suggest having different groups of passwords. For example having 5 Password Groups could give you:

1. A password for Social Media Sites
   
2. A password for your banking or brokerage accounts
   
3. A Password for your email accounts
   
4. A password for sites that do e-commerce
   
5. A password for sites that require you to sign up to gain access.
   
6. This means you need five phrases but if the phrases are something personal about your life; you are more likely to remember it.
   
7. If you do have to write down your passwords, DON'T write them on a sticky note that is affixed to your monitor or easily spotted on your desk. If you are ever robbed, not only will the thief steal your PC, but you will have given him access to all your websites and your personal information.

Passwords are the keys to grant access your electronic information. Since passwords are the first line of defense against hackers gaining access to your digital information; it is essential that we protect them like we do our home, car, wallet or Passport. Hackers are a clever bunch of people; so make sure you are doing your part to NOT to help them!

If you have questions about passwords or properly securing your digital information, leave us a support ticket or contact us and we will get back to you with an answer.

Andy is Webmaster for ToTheRescueDFW.com. For other articles of interest or information on the Computer and IT Support that we offer go to ToTheRescueDFW.com

Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=A_Thomas