Criminals can make good money by capturing and selling your passwords. If they can capture your password from one site, they can make the assumption that you use the same login information for multiple sites.
Read the article below and discuss ways you can protect yourself. What are some strategies you can use to prevent your information from being used against you?
This is actually a very important topic to myself. I have had my account hacked and messed with in the most awful ways. One measure I take now is to never save a password to the computer I always keep it on a notepad in my house in a safe. Another way that I protect my passwords is I change passwords depending on what branch of the internet or business I am at. Finally I keep up-to-date with my passwords and change them sporadically, this is important so that the hackers cannot obtain any information due to the randomized password changes and passwords which are never left long enough to Crack.
-Houston Hawthorne
It is scary to think that every website that you have an account with can be hacked. Specially when you have important stuff saved on these websites, for example, your credit card info, social security number, and even your physical address.
Luckily there is different ways in which you can protect yourself from being hacked. From the article I learned that there is a password manager LastPass which helps you make sure that your passwords are strong and will save them all in one place for you.
I use to think the easiest way to remember your passwords was to just have them all be the same for every website but that is the easiest way for someone to hack your information. Another thing you should not do is save all your passwords in your phone’s “Notes” app which is what a lot of people do. If someone gets a hold of your phone, there goes all your info!
A good way to help secure your accounts is to enable the text/email verification. With this enabled it sends you a code to either your phone or email and it is a safe way to make sure you are the only one logging in to that account. You can also keep a list of all your passwords written down but make sure it is a away from your computer and in a safe spot that only you know of.
An additional way I use to protect myself is to not respond to emails that claim to be from my bank (or any other company) requesting your account details. These are usually hackers or spam that got a hold of your email.
People are forgetful and use multiple social media, and many other sites on a daily bases. Plus with all the convenient and sometimes required things that must be done online now, we must constantly make more accounts to several things, with a password to each one of those accounts that are too often forgotten. It’s not safe to use the same password for everything, and not worth being hacked and having personal information exposed. There are several ways to be harmed out in the big web. That being said I definitely second the extra security the article suggested about getting directly messaged with a security code when logging in. That way the user can be certain they are the only one logging on. Changing passwords frequently helps too.
-Belky
We are living in a networking world, so we use social network by logging our passwords every day. When I use the Internet frequently, the chance of my passwords being stolen is increased; that means my personal information such as name, phone number, address, and even social security number might be easily stolen as well. An Identity theft might use my information to apply for new credit cards for buying luxury goods without my permission. There are some ways to protect myself away from being a victim. First, blocking malware is the first action to keep away information-stealing malware. I found that there are many Anti-Malware utility software programs I can choose from, such as McAfee, Norton and Microsoft. Second, preventing my passwords from being exposed on phishing sites is another way to protect myself. Sometimes, I might provide my personal information to set up an account and password on a shopping website in order to get a free gift, which may be a terrible idea. Finally, preventing reuse of passwords on different websites can reduce the chance of being hacked too; I try not to use the same password for other websites even though I used to do that. Hopefully, these ideas can help other people to be free of cyber-crime.
Thank you for sharing such an interesting article and giving us an opportunity to earn extra credit.
One of the things that intrigued me about this article was that they mentioned about the dark web. I’m not a technical/IT person, but I’ve read crazy things about it, and how you can practically buy anything you wish through the dark web. A new passport? Not a problem! An access to a celebrity Twitter account? I guess so! WOW! For a non-technical person, it’s very hard to comprehend how things like that can happen on the Internet, and how there’s a whole new virtual world out there.
As it comes to securing the password, unfortunately I’m never able to remember all of them and I keep changing it to something else. I do understand the importance of having a strong password, although I’m not too worried about my social networks -( they will probably target celebrities and I don’t have any jealous boyfriends to hack my page) 🙂 The only other thing I can think of is hacking others accounts to send people spam and advertisements. What I’m worried the most – websites where I make payments and which have my credit card information. My e-bay account was hacked just a couple of weeks ago with someone using my stored payment information to purchase things online. My bank account was just compromised and completely shut down a week ago after my trip back to Europe. I think you’re never too safe out there, so it’s better to take all the action to protect our information online! Thanks.
Sorry for the additional comment, I forgot to mention the strategies. As the article explains, it’s better to have a complex password versus an easy one. Also, using different passwords for different things will help as well. Finding a secure storing place is a good idea too. Adding a security information as a phone number will also make it more difficult for hackers to access your data.
In today’s technological world, almost everything requires a username and a password. Whether you have to pay your car’s monthly payment or open your facebook account. Most of us use the same usernames and passwords so that we don’t forget. This makes it very easy for the hackers to hack into your accounts and manipulate and play with your private information. The most important thing, however, is to keep the password of your email account (or accounts) safe. This is because all the websites and accounts are ultimately linked to your email account from where, if you forget your password, you can reset it easily through your email. But what if these people have your email information? Even if you change your password for a site, they can still access your accounts. So yeah, the safest way, in my opinion, is to keep your email username and password safe so that the hackers cannot have access to your accounts once you change your password. Especially, the email that is linked to your sensitive information e.g. your amazon account or your bank account.
it is scary how it easy it has become for people to hack into one’s account. Even though websites claim to have maximum security with one’s password, and yet it still gets leaked. there are some ways people can prevent hackers from stealing their passwords. i personally never save passwords in the computers. i do advise people never create a password based on their name, or birthday, it can be easily found. another thing i like to do is to change my passwords, at least once a month, even if its a letter. Me being a bilingual person, sometimes give me an advantage when creating passwords. I can use a word that no one can would know the meaning of, which would be hard for the hacker to break. Adding number can also help make the password easily non detectable. making small changes in the password can save one from various troubles, especially when it comes important accounts like bank accounts or office/school accounts etc and also even if it gets leaked by the website, hacker would have a hard time getting into your account due to frequent changes you will make to the password. I strongly urge everyone to be very careful when selecting password, specially when we depend on the internet so much.
Some ways that people can keep their passwords safe is to use not only letters and numbers in their passwords, but to also change their passwords for each website. For example you could use the password a2b3c45 for one website and then a3b4c56 for another. It’s only a slight change but it would keep unauthorized people from being able to use your password to access multiple websites on your accounts.
As mentioned in the article, refrain using the same password for different accounts is a smart precaution to take. About a year ago, my laptop was stolen. My password for my email, pandora, youtube etc. were the same so the person was able to use them (which is pretty ridiculous because it’s FREE therefore they could have made their own account) anyways when I found out I reset my password, security questions and even added a verification code just in case. Having your account information hacked is very invasive of one’s privacy but lesson learned. The article provides good tips on how to make a strong password making it harder for hackers to figure out. Also, as mentioned by others not saving your information even on your personal computer is a good safety measure. Instead, write them on paper and keep in a safe place. Yet, passwords can still be leaked or hacked but there are ways to try to make the job harder.
This article really give me more knowledge about how to save my personal information. I have just recently need to change my password on my bank account for security. I think if hackers want to get someone information, they will find ways so it is really hard for companies and websites such as Twitter to save our own one. Therefore, Twitter has tried its best to serve customer. The good way for me to secure my information is to not post publicly to much and make sure changing my password twice a year