Your online privacy depends on the strength of your passwords.
Your privacy is only as safe as your weakest password.
Ok, so maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but let’s face it. The strength of your passwords is important. If it wasn’t, why would so many people be interested in hacking them!
Passwords keep your private stuff private. They make sure that the emails sent from your account are actually written by you. They make sure that the Posts, Likes and Comments that appear on your Facebook page are authentic. They keep your Dropbox photos private. They make sure your coffee card is used exclusively to buy frothy sweet drinks for the people you want to treat.
Of course, passwords also prevent criminals from draining your bank account, running up charges on your credit cards, and causing all sorts of other mischief.
Clearly, having a strong password and keeping it secure is important. Which leads to the question – how can you create rock-solid passwords and keep them protected? Here are 14 simple steps to help you out.
Hackers look for vulnerabilities that they can exploit.
If you look for the term zero-day attack in your home dictionary, you probably won’t find it.
Go ahead and check…I’ll wait.
You might not even find the term in some online dictionaries (though to be fair, it does appear in others.).
Nevertheless, if you google the term, you’ll find thousands of references to it, many of them from mainstream sources including Forbes, Time, and USA Today. So what’s the deal? If the term is so important, why isn’t in the dictionary yet?
When hackers breach banks and retailers, there’s not much you can do. Fortunately, there are some things you can do to protect your personal data from falling into the wrong hands.
Continue Reading… The Year of the Hack: How to Prevent Your Personal Data from being Hacked
Is that Adobe Flash update notification you received legitimate? Or is it a scam designed to install malware on your computer?
Cybercriminals disguise malware as pop-up notifications to update Adobe Flash, Adobe Reader, Web browsers, Java or other mainstream software. The update notifications are designed to look legitimate, such that unsuspecting individuals are unlikely to think twice before clicking on “Install”.
But when and where do these fake software requests tend to appear? And how can you tell a real update request from a fake one? Here’s what you need to know.
Continue Reading… Is That Software Update Actually Malware?
Your email archive is full of information that’s valuable to you—and to cybercriminals.
The combination of plentiful email storage and relaxed password practices enable criminals to do their worst. Many Web-based email systems now offer multiple gigabytes of storage for free. For example, Google gives you 15GB to share across Gmail, Google Drive, and other Google services. With all that free storage, you may be using your email account as a kind of searchable archive of important data. And you probably don’t delete messages that you might have erased in the past. With gigabytes of storage, why bother? You may need those messages for reference later.
Continue Reading… How Valuable is Your Email Account to Hackers?
