Are you making a target for fraud? Top Stories and more often than the morning hearing 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. Do not let this happen to you.
Are you making these dangerous mistakes?
Mistake # 1: Use the same password for all accounts.
Please do not do this. Use different passwords for each email account, and definitely use unique passwords for shopping websites where you want to enter your credit card.
Error # 2: short passwords
The risk of someone guessing your password more difficult for the most are in it. So, go for the gusto and make your long passwords.
Mistake # 3: BradPitt, Charlie, Sarah, Princess, Barbie, Gandolf - I imagine it yet?
Do not use children's names, pet names, nicknames, names of characters in books or films or celebrity names. Even if you do not guess on my list, someone who knows you can.
Mistake # 4: Easy to remember English words
Easy to remember is also easy to guess. Passwords should not contain English words in the dictionary. Non-English words or any words in any dictionary is a high risk as well. And for goodness sakes, if your password is "password" or "test", then it's a miracle they have not been hacked yet!
Mistake # 5: The numbers are no-no.
Seriously, stay away from birthdays, anniversaries, addresses, social security numbers or phone numbers. They are easy to guess.
Choose random passwords for banking sites like PayPal. Combine letters (uppercase and lowercase) and numbers.
If all this sounds too hard to remember, you can use a password program. Most good password programs not only save your passwords on your computer, but will generate completely random passwords when needed.
Here are some to try.
http://www.fgroupsoft.com/Traysafe/ http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net/ http://www.treepad.com/treepadsafe/ It is never a good time to discover that someone has stolen your money - or locked out of their own email account. It's a waste of time and money. Please protect yourself.
May 17, 2011, 03:49:38 AM