Protect yourself online – use strong passwords
Another online application has been hacked. This time it’s iCloud, but there will be another application targeted tomorrow, next week, next year. It’s a running battle between those who make applications and those who want to break into them. In reality, if someone really wanted to, and had the time, they could probably hack your account, but hey, lets not make it simple for them. Here’s some quick advice to help keep you safe online.
1. Always have anti-virus and firewall software installed on any device that can connect to the internet.
2. Make sure that you allow the software to run automated updates, so that if there is a new threat, then you are protected.
3. Make sure that you run updates on the operating system that you use e.g. Windows.
4. Be careful about opening emails from people that you don’t know and clicking on links within those emails. For example, I’m constantly getting emails from paypalonline.com, which is just a phishing site looking for your PayPal account details.
5. The same applies links from social media account such a Facebook, for example a page was set up called Tesco. If you didn’t notice the full stop after the name, you would assume it was a Tesco business page.
6. Protect yourself from identity theft by not posting so much personal details about yourself. All someone needs is your name, address and date of birth and they can pretend to be you. For example, LinkedIn users don’t need to include their birthday or date of birth, Facebook doesn’t need to know which schools you went to, your real date of birth etc.
7. Use strong passwords for your online accounts and don’t use the same passwords. Once someone has worked out one password, they will try and use it on other accounts to access you details.
I’m a real movie buff and when you go back as far as the 80’s, with movies such as War Games, you’ll see that people have been hacking passwords for years and Hollywood has shown us how basic attacks are done. Brute force attacks, like iCloud, just use a computer programmed with all the possible numbers and words and let it run until it guesses the right one. If it’s a targeted attack, then some hackers will try and work out what passwords people use based upon the most frequent passwords used, their likes, family details, pets etc. With people sharing so much information about themselves on social media, a hacker wouldn’t have to work very hard to work out someone’s account passwords. With this in mind, when you devise passwords for yourself, please don’t include:
• Names such as family, friends or pets
• Numbers such as birthdays, phone numbers, car license plate
If you have used any of these passwords, then I strongly suggest that you change them. When you do, try to create a strong password. (Please note: the advice for creating strong passwords is always changing, so it’s worth using Google to find out the latest standard.)
Creating a strong password
A strong password:
• Contains at least 8 characters
• Is not made up of words found in a dictionary.
• Is not made up a just numbers.
• Is made up of both upper and lowercase characters – computers think they’re different.
• Includes symbols such as $&()!*@.
To create a password that you’ll remember, think of a sentence, for example “Mary had a little lamb”. Now make changes to the phrase so that it becomes unrecognisable. These could include:
• Removing the spaces
• Removing some or all vowels
• Replacing letters with numbers or symbols l with 1 or ), o with 0, b with 6, a with @
• Using the first letters of the phrase
Try and make sure each password has a least one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, a number and a symbol. So “Mary had a little lamb” could become:
• “Mha11!”
• M@ryh@d@1itt1e1@m6
• Mryhdl((llm6.
These are just some ways you can reduce your risk of being hacked, but there will always be trying so to quote Mad eye Moody from J.K.Rowling’s Harry Potter series “Constant vigilance!”
Keep safe.
Karen