Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Password Protection

How safe are your accounts? Do you cycle through the same set of passwords or use the same two for all your accounts? If you answered yes to any part of the last question, you might want to step up your online security game.

According to research done by the Ponemon Institute for CNNMoney, in 2014, a whopping 47% of adults had their personal information exposed by hackers. With nearly everything we do moving into the digital realm, such as shopping or paying bills, it has attracted more attention from possible hackers, giving them the chance for easy money. With the data that's stolen, it could be enough to get tracked down by an abusive ex, an easier target for scams, and even if it's only your basics, that can be paired easily with stolen credit card data, strengthening imposters efforts.

On a scale a bit smaller than identity theft, two significant social media accounts have recently been hacked.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, recently had his Twitter and Pinterest accounts hacked. Experts suspect it may be because he used an old password, one that had been hacked and linked to his LinkedIn leak from 2012.

The NFL Twitter account was also recently hacked, proclaiming that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell had passed away at age 57.


However, the hack did not last terribly long, with the first tweet being deleted almost immediately along with the two rapid-fire following tweets.

With all our information being increasingly moved to the online sphere, it is important we take the necessary steps to protect what we put out there. By following these tips from connectsafely.org, hopefully less will leak or at least you'll make a hacker's job much more difficult.

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