Are you making yourself a target for fraud? More and more often
I am hearing stories of people who have had their accounts
hacked. They have had money stolen, lost sleep, spent hours
setting up new accounts, or had their credit ruined. Don’t let
this happen to you.
Are you making these dangerous mistakes?
Mistake #1: Using the same password for all your accounts.
Please don’t do this. Use different passwords for every email
account, and definitely use unique passwords for shopping
websites where you’d enter your credit card.
Mistake #2: Short passwords
The risk of someone guessing your password is increasingly
difficult the more characters are in it. So, go for the gusto
and make your passwords long.
Mistake #3: BradPitt, Charlie, Sarah, Princess, Barbie, Gandolf
– Did I guess it yet?
Do not use kids’ names, pet’s name, nicknames, names from
characters in books or movies or celebrity names. Even if I
didn’t guess it in my list, someone who knows you could.
Mistake #4: Easy to remember English words
Easy to remember is also easy to guess. Passwords should not
contain English words found in a dictionary. Non-English words
or any words in any dictionary are a high risk as well. And, for
goodness sakes, if your password is “password” or “test” then
it’s a wonder you haven’t been hacked yet!
Mistake #5: Numbers are no-no’s.
Seriously, stay away from birthdays, anniversaries, addresses,
social security numbers or telephone numbers. They are all too
easy to guess.
Choose random passwords for banking sites like PayPal. Combine
letters (both uppercase and lowercase) and numbers.
If all of this sounds too hard to remember, then consider using
a Password program. Most of the good password programs will not
only store your passwords on your computer, but they’ll generate
completely random passwords when you need one.
Here are a few to try.
http://www.fgroupsoft.co
m/Traysafe/
http://passwordsafe.sou
rceforge.net/
http://www.treepad.com/t
reepadsafe/
It’s never a good time to find out that someone has stolen money
from you — or locked you out of your own email account. It’s a
waste of your time and money. Please protect yourself.
About the author:
Nicole Dean is the mostly-sane Mom behind
http://www.ShowMomTheMoney.com. Are you a Work at Home Mom
looking for help in your online business? Take the
ShowMomtheMoney 101 Tour – Free!
http://www.showmomthemoney.com/free-tutorial.htm