Using 1 Password Makes You an Easy Target
With all the online accounts that people use these days, it’s tempting to make up one password to enter them all. I mean, who wants to remember 10 different passwords for 10 different accounts? Well, the truth of the matter is that if you don’t make them unique, then a hacker just has to grab one set of “keys” to access them all.
You’re probably already aware of the guidelines some sites make by requiring you to enter a minimum number of characters. They may even require you to combine numbers and letters. This is good because they’re trying to make you think about creating a password that’s hard for others to guess instead of using “Fluffy”, the family pet.
A pet’s name, your birth date, and the like are too common for passwords, yet the ease in remembering them is very tempting. Fight the temptation!
A password doesn’t have to be a jumble of hard-to-remember characters, although, that would make it more secure. But you could make them hard-to-guess. Coming up with a word and putting numbers on either end of it, for example, would help reduce your risk to online intrusion.
Regardless of whether you make a password hard-to-remember or hard-to-guess, you’d be doing yourself a favor by recording them securely.
You could enter them in a Microsoft Excel file and password protect that, but cracking into anything with the word “Microsoft” involved is quite an attraction for hackers. Probably not your safest choice.
You’re better off using a software package specifically designed for keeping your passwords safe. AnyPassword is just such a download and it’s free! The only password you need to remember is the one to get into its file. It even creates passwords for you based on your specifications and allows you to add other important information as notes, such as the email address you used to create the account.
There are many, many other software offerings that do this same thing. Some are free, others have a cost. Some are even online, and while that may be a big attraction for some, I just haven’t been able to allow myself to join that crowd yet. The thought of having all my account information — numbers, passwords, emails, and so on — all in one place online is a bit unnerving for me.
It has been estimated that over 15 million people were victims of identify theft in 2006 in the U.S. Once hackers find a way in to your computer, particularly if you use one password everywhere, then it’s no longer one account they can abuse — it’s the online auction site, bank accounts, credit card sites. The list goes on and on.
Bottom line: using unique passwords for each online account is a stronger defense and a small price to pay when you consider the trouble you’ll be saving yourself down the road.
[tags]identity theft,internet fraud,online safety,internet safety[/tags]
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For Mac Users, there is a product called 1Passwd (see 1Passwd.com) that is a similar application to this – it will remember your password, fill in forms for you and can also generate new passwords for you. It is an awsome timesaving tool. It is for sale, but there is a good demo version available that might suit the needs of a single person with limited internet usage….
Happy surfing!
Sara
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to enter them all. I mean, who wants to remember 10 different passwords for 10 different accounts? Well, the truth of the matter is that if you don’t make them unique, then a hacker just has to grab one set of “keys†to access them all. read more | digg story