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How
many passwords do you have, at your work, at home, from
your locker, bank accounts, etc? It is very possibly
that we are talking about double digit number of
password for the average person. Password protection is very important to you since they protect your data,
personal details, your money and your personal
integrity. |
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But
if you loose some of your passwords you are in problem,
since you cannot operate with some of your own
resources. Even worse happen if somebody steals your
password. In this case you can loose business
information, money from your account, or you can be
accused for acts that you didn’t do. So how should you
help yourself regarding password safety
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Choosing
a Good Password
First
rule of password protection is when
you creating your password do not try to choose to
obvious password, like your name or name of your spouse.
Also, do not take the password after your football club,
hobby, birthday number or anything else that people
around you may know.
I
was personally able to hack the passwords of my friends
that have problem with lost passwords. I do not do
hacking professionally or as an hobby, but I was able to
"pick the lock" by trying to use some obvious
personal information.
What
should you do to increase your password protection? Try to use
more than 6 letters. Use combination of letters and
numbers. Use capital letters. Change your login password
periodically. When you registering for an email account,
you can use two methods for help in case that you loose
your login password. One method is the "secret
question-answer", where you set the question that
you will be asked if you loose your login password. If you
answer correctly, you will be able to create a new login
password. Another method is the use of secondary e-mail
address, where your login password will be sent, if you
request it. Simply, you can register on two accounts and
cross-connect these two accounts as a secondary account.
Be
careful about what is your keyboard language set. If you
change your language setting, your keys will be mixed
up. For example letters "y" and "z"
may change places if you change language setting.
Password Store
Now,
since you have a good login password, the logical question is
how to store the password in order to maintain the
password security? This is always an difficult
issue. The most "secure" way of storing your
password is memorizing. But this method is not the most
reliable, since you can forget your login password, especially
if you juggling many passwords. If you have many login passwords, try to use some software password database
software. The simplest way of password storage is using
password protected excel sheet.
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At
least try to avoid the worst method, which is
writing the password on your desk, in your note
book, etc.
Regarding
the password protection, there
is always a certain possibility for your password
to be stolen, no matter how unimportant your
account may look to somebody. Even a secondary
email account can be the target of hackers. One of
the most frequent ways of password hijacking is
using of false membership offer. This offer
usually arrives as a Spam mail that offers you to
register to same service, like dating service,
"check who blocked you on MSN", etc.
These "services" are offering you a
membership form where they, among other fields,
ask you for your mail account and the login password.
Why would they ask you your password? For simple
reason – to hijack your account and use it for
spamming, or at least for collecting your contacts
for their mail databases, that can be sold on
market.
Social
hacking is
another method of
hacking of your login password. Simply, hacker is
contacting you as a "system
administrator" or similar support service and
asks you your personal data, including your login password. This is not technical hacking, but
simply social hacking, where the hacker is using
security unawareness of some people. The most well
known hacker was Kevin Mitnik, whose main strategy
was based on social hacking.
Even
if you give your password to somebody you really
know well, like your friend or system
administrator that you know, change your password
after you have no more need to share the password.
Even if person that was given password is
reliable, maybe the method of their system of
password management is not reliable. |
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Password
protection is very important when it comes to
financial transactions. Try to use reliable services like
Pay Pal. Also, the page for password entering should be
encrypted ( you will be notified by browser ). If some
service is not offering you encrypted page or if you are
suspicious for any other reason, do not give your login password.
As
a conclusion, to keep the password protection at
reasonable acceptable level, keep security and reliability as main
principles of safe password storage.
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