How to Hack People – For Dummies!
“My account got hacked…”
I’ve got news for you – you’re making it too easy. This article will tell you how they’re hacking you & what to do about it.
It’s actually pretty easy to hack an uninformed person’s account. I’ve been hearing this far too often lately & it’s something that can (& should be) prevented! Regardless of what kind it account it is, there are some universal guidelines that should help prevent those hackers from getting in.
There are programs out there that will troll different websites & find the accounts with easy-to-guess passwords. Then they use your account to send spam to your address books on your behalf. A lot of unwanted I see here in our office spam filter is from unaware gmail/yahoo/hotmail accounts that have been infected by these bots. It can & will happen! I’m sure many of you are aware of similar instances regarding facebook & twitter accounts.
As simple as it sounds, most people ignore the fact that a secure password is ESSENTIAL in this technological age. Using a word that you could look up in a dictionary is not secure. Typing ‘qwerty’ is not secure.
What can you do about it?
Create 3 password ‘tiers’ for yourself – I developed the 3-tier approach to avoid people (& programs) cross-referencing your password from one account to the next. This will help you classify the security needed in the password. What I mean by this 3-tier thing is don’t use the same password on an online arcade that you use for your bank account. I think a 3-tier approach should be employed by the common/casual every day internet user. If you’re reading this blog, you’re definitely in this category.
If you’ve stumbled here to help a friend who uses computers infrequently, possibly a recent hackee, a 2-tier approach would be far more effective than the “I use this password for everything” approach.
The 3-tiers
1st Tier – General purpose – (places that don’t contain your personal info, fun sites, forums, a possible one-time visit, or a site that is maintained by an unknown entity)
2nd Tier – Secure use – (contains personal info, daily usage, things that you care about – i.e. general email, e-commerce, twitter, your blog, etc)
3rd Tier – Private Identity info – (banks, bills, finances, private email)
For someone that works heavily in the business world, create a fourth tier for your business-life. Since I am an IT guy, I actually employ 5-tiers … Once you develop this habit, it’s really simple to remember what passwords go where. I wouldn’t waste my time writing a blog about it if it wasn’t.
PASSWORD GUIDELINES
Here are some general guidelines to follow:
The general purpose password (1st Tier) can be quick and easy to type, a minimum of 6 characters made up of at least one letter & one number – preferably not a real word.
Secure use password (2nd Tier) should contain a mimimum of 8 characters & should contain at least one letter, one number, one symbol & should be pattern-oriented rather than language-oriented. Using at least one spacebar somewhere in a password will add to the security of your account.
Private Identity password (3rd Tier) should be a minimum of 10 characters, must contain a mimimum of 1 lowercase letter, 1 uppercase letter, 1 number, 1 symbol, 1 spacebar. Definitely should be created with a pattern and no common rhyme or reason to it.
**As a bonus, I highly recommend you create 2 passwords for each tier. Use them both at random for different websites on each tier. This makes differentiating your accounts twice as secure. You don’t have to remember what password goes where, just what tier you’re on & you’ll only have to try one PW or the other.
Go to this website to check & see if your passwords are making the grade:
PASSWORD METER
**Please note: my 2nd Tier passwords are hitting the 75% mark on this website, but they follow my guidelines above & I feel confident with them.
…or if you want to get really technical, check the Microsoft site to see how they grade your password:
Microsoft Password Strength Checker
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“I had strong passwords & I still got hacked…”
Now for the portion of the article the hackers don’t want you to know about – -
Just because your password is good doesn’t mean your account is unhackable…
Wanna know an easy way to hack someone’s account?
What’s your security question? Do you even remember setting that up?
“What’s your mother’s maiden name?” Well, let me figure out which relatives are tagged in your facebook albums…
“What’s your first pet’s name?” Jump on facebook and find out… or your blog, or etc.
You’re starting to get the idea.
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You don’t have to be a snot-nosed pimple-infested computer nerd to hack someone’s account. And I’m betting this is how they got into yours.
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If the answer to your security question is something common knowledge that people can easily research, you are at risk!
Think about it – now that I found with relative ease the password to your email, I can reset all of the passwords to all of your websites… they’ll send me a notice to the email account I just hacked. I can click the reset password link & gain control over all of your accounts.
What can you do about it? SIMPLE – Don’t use the security questions!
“But I can’t sign up for gmail (or facebook or etc etc etc) without a security question?!”
Here’s what I do:
What is your mother’s maiden name?
IME>> ><*&N0tÛŽmM&87 8&SMD¤*7my78( (š®(S s9*^@5{939<2))(8f- MDm9 777 DN ks*@&@ETN S E t @ $ %#$# EB _ */5SœW¥º (SN093 0‹žÕ23 sd3255 M& E>2))(8f- MDm9
Get the idea? Answer the security question with a big long string of random garbled gibberish…
“Well how the heck am I going to recover my account?”
Use the “send the password reset to email” function. And use caution to not lose your email passwords! Just be deliberate & careful if/when you change the recovery email password.
If you were reading my password tips above carefully, you’ll see that I mentioned both a ‘general email’ in tier-2 and a ‘private email’ in tier-3.
Use the tier-3 private email to sign up for all of your tier-2 accounts. And you can use your tier-2 general email for the tier-1 stuff. Don’t tell anyone what that tier-3 email address is. Give out your general email address if people need to contact you. Get the jist of it? If someone outside of the site administrator can see what email you’re using for the account, use your general email.
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If you follow my advice above, congratulations, you are now going to be pretty much unhackable!
If any of the above article is greek to you, comment below with a clarification question or shoot me an email to: bentessman@gmail.com (my 2nd Tier email address, mind you) and I’ll happily respond to you!
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Like this post? Do me a favor and send it on to a friend who might benefit. Feel free to use my short link: http://wp.me/pME3N-f
But this is not the light at the end of the tunnel for me; this is just the beginning!
