It may sound paranoid, but with hackers lurking in every corner of the Web, you have to take Internet security extremely seriously.
If you want to safeguard your data you need to lock it up. And in cyberspace you do this by using passwords (strings of widely different unrelated characters).
But there are locks and there are locks, and some are ridiculously easy to pick.
Some passwords (undoubtedly created in a weed haze) like 123456, password, qwerty, Iloveyou, baseball, dragon, football, monkey, letmein, abc123, 111111 provide laughable protection against intruders.
With passwords like this, a first grade hacker could infiltrate your system within minutes.
To maximize the buoyancy of your cyber vessel you must divide it into watertight compartments and bulkheads and you want to use a different password for all the sites you do business with.
If an intruder can get hold of one of your passwords, it should not give him carte blanche to visit and loot all your accounts.
I am painfully aware of computer security and I use no less than 92 different (12 digits) passwords in my daily routines.
Sigh…
But managing passwords can be a real challenge, especially when you have to update them on a regular basis.
You need to carefully track your passwords and put on paper any change you make, including the date you do it.
If you want to be ultra safe, you could also encrypt your data.
On a Mac, you would use the FireVault feature to do this.
When FileVault is enabled the system invites the user to create a master password for the computer. If a user password is forgotten, the master password or recovery key may be used to decrypt the files instead.
It sounds pretty straightforward but it is not. Before encrypting your files, make pretty damn sure that your write down the master password and the recovery Key (24 digits). Otherwise you will be in Big Poopoo.
But the password system is cumbersome and obsolete.
We need something simpler and more secure to navigate the Internet.
I think that the Next Big Thing is going to be a system that identifies you quickly and accurately as the legitimate owner of an account, without going to the trouble of entering a complicated password each time you go online.
What is it going to be? Retina scanning? Voice recognition?
Chi lo sa?
But the guy (or the guyette) who can make it happen is going to be amply rewarded.
Kids, start coding! There is gold is them thar hills!
In the meantime, use 12 digits passwords whenever you use a credit card to purchase something online.
And please, unless you like to suffer, forget “letmein” or “Iloveyou”.
Alain