Quite some time ago I taught a mini-lesson with the above title for Virtual Ability in Second Life. This blog post is an adaptation of that mini-lesson.
Let me begin this post with the following advice:
At this moment, I want nothing more, than that every single one of you understands what I'm about to explain. If you have questions after reading this post, then pretty please, ask them! The safety of your user accounts (and perhaps more than that) depends on it.
Now for some recommendations:
...and I'm not only referring to the desktop computer you might be reading this post on. A PDA, smartphone, tablet, or laptop, is also a computer.
Truth be told...I have, in the past, committed the first of these transgressions myself. I know better now, and when you're done readong this blog post, I hope you'll know better too.
In the past I've heard of a number of websites having been hacked. Two of these breaches involved websites on which I have an account. This led me to make the mini-lesson from which I made this web page.
I'll tell you about some steps you can take to make (reasonably) sure your accounts are safe. If you have questions about any of these steps, then please let me know.
A number of services offer the possibility to log into them with Facebook or another service. This basicly means that you're using the user account information of one service to log into another service.
I advise against this, and would also recommend you disconnect other services from your Facebook account.
A 'good password' is a random sequence of characters. A password should be a mix of letters (both upper- and lowercase), numbers, and other characters. I'll provide some solutions for this, when we get to where to store your passwords. This will also help you with step 3.
Go through all accounts for which you use a standard password, and change that password. After that, please don't use a standard password ever again.
By this time, you may be thinking..."Hang on! I have so many accounts...there's Empire Avenue, Facebook, Flickr, Google, Instagram, LinkedIn, Plurk, Reddit, Second Life, Skrill, Twitter...not to mention my email, website, and blog. If I'm not supposed to write my passwords down, or save them in a file, and if I'm supposed to use a different password for all my accounts (and safe ones at that), then I'll never be able to remember all of them!"
My answer...?
Don't panic, organize!
Whatever operating system you use, you can store all of your user account information in one place.
If you use macOS, then you can save all your user account information in Keychain, which is built right into the operating system. If you do that, then all you need to remember is how to access your user account on your computer. If you're anything like me, you do that many times every single day, so that shouldn't be a problem.If you use Windows, you can use a Portable App like KeePass. The disadvantage is that you can only use it on a computer running Windows with a USB connector available.
Whatever operating system you use, you can use services like LastPass, or 1Password. LastPass is free of charge, while 1Password is not.
BTW, all of these solutions, can also be used to generate passwords. This gives you an easy way to create safe passwords.
Now that you have all your user account information in one place, it's time to get rid of all those password notes.
If you have collected your passwords in an unprotected file on your computer, delete it. If you have written your passwords down on paper, destroy it. And that includes the note under your keyboard, under your mouse mat, in your desk drawer, in your wallet...please, tell me I haven't found yours yet. If I have, then you kept your password note in a very predictable spot! Especially if that's the case, you may want to replace all the passwords you have written down there.
If you like this post, then please feel free to share the URL to it. Also, I hope I did a good job at adapting the text to this web page. If you should still find something then please do let me know using the form below.
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