Every time that you cleverly come up with a seemingly complicated combination of letters, symbols and numbers for a password, you are not only up against creepy individual hackers, you are up against a myriad of easily obtainable super-computers! Your password has to be strong enough to hold up against these computer programs that can use infinite numbers of dictionaries from multiple languages, Wikipedia and everything in the World Fact Book to run encrypted passwords in a matter of MINUTES. Passwords like yours are probably too short, too personal or just too simple or predictable.
This article will help you to see that you need to change your password as soon as possible and it will also give you hints on how to create ‘bulletproof’ passwords and protect yourself against the highly technologically advanced, increasingly adaptable hacker world.
Cracking weak passwords is easy! Steve Ragan, Tech Herald journalist, proved this when he used free downloadable software and a $300 off-the-shelf computer to crack over 80,000 encrypted passwords in only 5 hours.
It is very important to remember that once ONE of your passwords has been compromised, (just like 24+ million Zappos.com shoppers earlier this month), it isn’t just bad news for that one account on that one Zappos website. The hackers can have a ‘hacking party’ with access to your Facebook, Twitter, or email accounts IF you have used the same login for these other services as well. Information can be extracted from one of your accounts and used against you to access another. Continue reading →