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?
Want your Mother’s Day flowers to arrive? Order from a trusted and reputable site.
So it’s a week or so before Mother’s Day and you’re thinking about what to get for your mom. Buy her a book on Amazon? Send her a bouquet of flowers via an online florist? Buy tickets online for an upcoming show?
If you’re like millions of sons and daughters, you’ll probably shop for your mother online this year. It’s a great convenience, that’s true, but it also poses hazards. After all, though online shopping is handy, it can lead to trouble.
The potential dangers of online shopping certainly don’t mean your mother should be deprived of a gift this year. Heaven forbid! And they also don’t mean you need to drive cross-country to drop off your gift in person (though she might appreciate that). What they do mean is that if you want to shop online and not get burned, you need to take some precautions.
Public Wifi is convenient, but is it safe?
Internet cafés are so 2014. Today, almost every café worth its coffee beans offers free public WiFi. So do fast food restaurants, bus stops, intercity trains, airports, malls, libraries, hotels, and public toilets. Yes, even public toilets.
But the fact that WiFi is public and free doesn’t mean that it’s safe. To the contrary, it could be quite dangerous. Because if WiFi is free and accessible to you, then it’s free and accessible to everyone, including hackers.
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
