Strong Passwords Are Not Enough

As the hack of the accounts of former Gizmodo writer Mat Honan proved, it takes more than good passwords to keep your accounts safe. In fact, technically speaking, Mr. Honan’s accounts weren’t ‘hacked’ - the attackers used some simple social engineering and gained access with a few calls to Apple and Amazon support. But, thanks to this article from Lifehacker, you can keep it from happening to you. Coles notes below!

Audit services like iCloud: online services like iCloud are not as secure as you think. Though Mr. Honan goes into more detail in this article on Wired, we can sum up his recommendations with:

Create a separate Apple ID for your iCloud account
Turn OFF remote wipe for your computers
Don’t attach your home address to anything public like your domain name
Don’t connect services like iCloud to your secure accounts (like Outlook or Gmail) as they provide an easy loophole for hackers to access

Use different strong passwords for each of your accounts

Don’t use alternative versions of the same password
Use multi-phrase passwords
Audit and update your passwords regularly
Use a tool like KeePass (our preferred tool) to keep track of all your passwords

Use 2-Factor Authentication

Some services (like Google and Facebook) will not only require a password to access but can also send a special, one-time code to your phone that must also be used to access the account. If any of your online services offer this, use it.

Beef up your password recovery

Set up a non-primary email address to send password recovery messages to
Make your security questions difficult to answer: add extra words, shift your hand on the keyboard when typing in the answer, pick out key words in the question

Back Up, Back Up, Back Up!

It will take some time, but implementing these steps will help you keep your information and identity much more secure. Do you use any of these methods? All of them? Let us know in the comments below!

Tags: email, encryption, how to, security, technology