No, seriously, it is.
If it makes you feel any better, most people’s passwords are too weak.
I suppose you think it doesn’t matter how “strong” your Gmail (or Hotmail or whatever free email you use) password is, right? Well, you’d be wrong. I recently read an account about how one person’s Gmail account was hacked and used to spam and try to get her friends to send the hacker money, all posed as her. Of course, that was after deleting more than 4 Gigabytes of stored messages and photos. You can read that account, as told by her husband, over at the Atlantic, in an article titled “Hacked!” It’s worth reading, especially if you’re not in the IT business. And, frankly, even for a fellow professional computer geek, it might be eye-opening to see how hacked email accounts are being used these days. I have to admit, I was a little surprised that the attacker in question actually used the account personally to try and con money out of the victim’s friends and family.
I was not, however, all that shocked to see how many accounts are compromised on a regular basis. Think the thousands. Daily.
Right, so thousands of email accounts on which people depend are hijacked, used and abused on a daily basis. If it hasn’t happened to you, it’s probably only a matter of time. So, how do they do it? Shared, easily guessable passwords.
Yes, it’s that easy.
Stop for a minute and think about how many passwords you use on a regular basis. How many are the same? How many accounts do you have for things like bank accounts and credit cards and medical records that use the same password as your email? And how many of those accounts use that same email address as the username?
Getting the picture?
So, what do you do?
First, stop reusing passwords.
Second, make more secure passwords. And, don’t think that the old way of replacing “L” with the numeral one or the letter “O” with the numeral zero and that kind of thing will work, either. The hackers are on to that. It’s better to use words that are not in the dictionary. So, yes, made up words. Or, even better, phrases, which is what I’ve recommended for some time. Having a hard time coming up with one? Try using one generated randomly for you at passphra.se, a random passphrase generator which was inspired by an XKCD comic. The comic explains the reasoning behind the passphrase idea and the generator. Also, XKCD is pretty funny and if you’re geeky like me at all, it’s well worth checking out.
In today’s world, we’re way too interconnected and digital and reliant on those systems to have relaxed security. It doesn’t matter if you’re a geek or not. Please, think about your passwords and how easily they might be compromised. Then think about what that might mean to your life, digital and otherwise.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go change some passwords…
Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"My obligation is to do the right thing. The rest is in God's hands."
--Martin Luther King
