Security 101: Your Password Sucks
Click the picture to see how you can stop this guy from hacking your password
Preaching the same mantra wherever you go might get a little old after a while. Those who know and believe in your expertise tend to move your constant advice and alerts somewhere in the category of nagging background noise while they go back to their old habits. Then there are those who don’t believe in your expertise to begin with, or even if what you tell them sounds commonsensical, they might find it too complicated to stick to it. Until one day, their computer either doesn’t respond any longer to their commands, or it freezes completely. And this would be just one of the happiest cases. Others might end up getting weird questions from their friends, like why do they keep sending them those annoying Viagra messages.
It gets worse when you wake up one day and you see your credit card charged for a brand new Xbox or a pimped up bicycle that was just shipped to… Russia. This is still not the worst case scenario, but by now you’ve got the picture. It could all start from your computer. And yes, it could happen to you. Statistics and horror stories in the news keep showing growing trends on cyber crime. The purpose of this post is just to show that, in case you didn’t feel like your friendly neighborhood expert (that would be us – eBiz Miami) might have a point when urging you in our newsletters to pay attention to your online habits, maybe you’ll listen to the “big boys”, who are in the trenches of digital warfare day and night, all year round. And if you take only one thing from the article we recommend here, it should be this: make sure that your favorite password does not end up as the master key to your doors, online and offline.
Read this recent post from McAffee, one of the leaders in the internet security industry. If, upon reading the article, you find that your password sucks, find time to apply the easy steps suggested there to strengthen it. Do that at least for the one on your online banking web site. Like, today!
