On Social Networking and Keeping Your Password Safe
Five years ago, things were painless online – you pretty much had just a single password to store for your email address. Nowadays though it’s not remarkable to have 20 or 30 passwords for countless internet services you’ve signed up to. And what happens? Lots of people tend to utilise the very same password over and over. Some individuals may not think their Facebook account as being majorly vital, but it is if you’re applying the very same password for that as you are for your PayPal account. Sure, the convenience of having to remember just a single password is persuasive, but what if an individual gets hold of that one password? You guessed it, they in theory have access to all of the servives you’ve signed up to that use that same password. If you think they don’t know what other services you’ve signed up to, they don’t need to. They run programs which examine tens of thousands of services against your username/password pair that they know about.
This is an issue we all have to consider, but it can be solved. The fact is, it’s not required to store each and every account name/password. Why? Your browser can store this data. Be it your Bebo sign in or Email password. Ask your browser to remember each account name/password, and then have a central password (“master password”) just in case someone else gets physical access to your computer. If they do so, they will have to enter the master password to login to any of your services. In other words, you can join hundreds of services, and simply have to remember one password : your browser’s master password (achieving what you desired to do in a safe fashion – requiring just one password.
When making passwords, make them long and random, for example K94545Dcd which is an assortment of numbers, lower and upper case characters. As it’s not required to remember them, be as obscure as you wish. Whatever you do, don’t use normal words as your password, as these are easy to identify for hackers.
