Managing Passwords

It’s the twenty-first century, we all have multiple accounts from social to work-related accounts. Most of us only have a couple passwords for all of our accounts. We have heard it all before, we need strong passwords. But if nothing bad has happened why bother? I will tell you in this blog post. 

So...Why are Passwords important?

I know you are bored of hearing "Passwords are important". So, I’ll try to tell you in the least boring terminology. Starting with an example of how easily hackers can grab your data; let's say I have the same username and password for the majority of my accounts, for example my username is: "Betty212" and my password is: "Speakybetty123". I use this combination over all social media and other accounts, and hypothetically Facebook gets a data breach and, in that data breach, my password is stolen. A hacker can then test my username and password on all websites and social media platforms etc to see if it works. In this case they would have hit the jackpot, the hackers could access all my data in every site, along with extra information such as email address, home address, phone numbers etc. This example is pretty basic however this type of hacking happens all the time.

Have a look at the Ted Talk video down below:

How to deal with having many passwords?

You probably have more things to worry about than remembering 20+ strong passwords; don't worry, nobody expects you too.

There are tools such as Dashlane and LastPass for making it easier to remember your passwords. Many people question the safety of websites/apps like these as you are technically saving passwords online… However due to the service being heavily encrypted, even if it is hacked, hackers still require your master password to get your data. The only hick-up here is if you actually forget the master password in which case, good luck!

Let's see what Ellen thinks...

Want more ideas to stay safe? see below....

- You can download a privacy screen protector that tints the screen to make it harder for unwanted people to look at your phone:
     - Android
     - Apple

- You could apply two-factor authentication on many accounts. Blog post on 2FA coming soon!

Stay tuned for more interesting info!