![]() If they get a receipt at a time they are expecting, but with the wrong total, the immediate reaction is to click on the link to the receipt and see what went wrong with the purchase. We will look more closely at these and other phishing attacks in another article, but some brief examples.Įmail: Here is your Amazon receipt for $3,452.76Īttackers know that if you send out a million emails like this, you are going to get at least a few people who just completed an order from Amazon. The malicious people who steal passwords know they can often get people to give up their passwords, if they just ask in the right way. What is the most common method of password theft? Usually, we give our passwords to the thief. Your bank most likely has much better security than the account protecting your access to the local newspaper, but if you use the same password for both accounts, if the newspaper is cracked, that password will be attempted to login at your bank as well.ĭon’t enter a password from an email, text message, or social media post So, you know someone who used long, random passwords, but their account was still broken into – how does that happen? Most of the time it is because we have the habit of reusing the same passwords in multiple locations. We will cover some methods of making (and remembering!) long, random passwords soon. ![]() If your password is Astros2ndBase! your account may not stay secure for long. If an attacker sees your Facebook page where you root for your favorite baseball team, they are likely to have their systems try passwords with words Houston, Astros, Baseball, and a whole dictionary of words and numbers associated with that team. (This is more easily done when a password database of hashed passwords are stolen, from which you might see charts of password cracking times based on length.) Passwords should be 13 characters long, or longer. With a short password, a computer program can simply guess every combination until it finds the correct one. Length is important to prevent brute force guessing. The two most important factors in a strong password are length and randomness. ![]() The good news is that there are now tools and strategies that can assist with this important task. What can be confusing is how to create and remember passwords and what makes a password strong. I think we all understand the need for secure passwords to keep malicious people out of our accounts. This article deals with passwords and authentication. Part of a series of articles with cybersecurity advice meant to help you stay secure online.
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