Managing Your Online Accounts Safely
There is so much available online, that having multiple online accounts at your fingertips is quickly becoming the norm. Even on certain web sites, browsers can develop many accounts or profiles. This includes basic information web sites as well as web properties that collect personal information. It’s normal for people with multiple accounts to try to simplify the password process by leveraging a single password or login for each account.
Computer hackers are aware of the habits of everyday users, and will exploit them for their own benefit at every opportunity. Therefore, cyber criminals understand that many Internet users use the same password for more than one account. Accessing account information for just one website, which may be far less secure than more sensitive accounts for online banking or credit cards, could allow access to a great deal of personal information that makes identity theft simple for cyber crooks. For example, account information security for a Fantasy Baseball website may be far less complex than that of an online credit card service. Cyber criminals have techniques to decipher passwords to accounts with lacking security technology, such as a Fantasy Baseball website. If the user has applied the same credentials to their sports website as their banking and credit card websites, and the cyber criminal finds out out the Fantasy Baseball password, he or she immediately has access to sensitive accounts.
Although web browsers are at risk for a number of different online risks, one of the most common is a phishing scam. These scams are effective when you receive an email of a well know site asking you to log in to your account. Rather than the web site creating the email, its actually an online criminal who will use his software to track your keystrokes when logging in. This is done without your knowledge but records your actions, allowing a third party to access the site at a later time based on the information you inadvertently provided.
Web users face a number of significant risks associated with their account log in information. The first step to protect themselves from these inevitable risks is to make sure every account has a unique password different passwords. It may be difficult at first, as trying to remember different user names and passwords for every account can become difficult, but it is worth the trouble to prevent identity theft. Also, users can keep a small notebook or a document with all of their account information written down, available to access when trying to remember which password applies to which account. Furthermore, after repeated use of these websites, users will soon memorize passwords and can access their accounts without relying on a reference guide.
Once you are on board with unique passwords and credentials, another way to protect yourself is through the use of passwords that are difficult to decode. Many Internet browsers may take the first step of creating unique information but then use common words or phrases as a password that can often times be guessed or determined according to public information. Online criminals may have a variety of information that provides them password clues. Use a combination of factors including capital letters, lower case letters and numbers with each password.
Here is a good technique for creating and remembering a complex password. It uses a sentence based approach that requires you to write a ten word sentence. Once you’ve completed your sentence, take the first letter or number of each word to form an acronym. This ten letter acronym can become your password for a variety of sites by changing capitalization. However, this sentence should be easy to remember as it is used across different sites requiring passwords. Consider how you can develop complex passwords that are easy to remember but not common or easy to figure out. You could consider lines from your favorite songs or movies. Use a methodology of capitalization to add complexity to your password as well. Remember, the more complex it appears the more difficult it will be to guess.
Although creating and remembering multiple, complicated passwords for different accounts can be quite a bit of work in the initial stages, facing identity theft or unauthorized access to banking accounts requires much more work and frustration than memorizing a few passwords.
Ascentive, makers of PC Speed Scan was founded in 1998 and develops easy-to-use software for consumers and businesses that resolve every day PC problems including maintenance, optimization, and security. Pc speedscan pro and other Ascentive products have been used by over one million people and are now available in seven languages.
