![]() ![]() You can also give it to someone you trust to store in their password manager, a la giving a neighbor a spare key. If you’re afraid of forgetting one of these master passwords, you can write it down and keep it secure with your other important documents. ![]() The password for your password manager (with the emergency key stored somewhere else safe, in case you need to restore access) Your list of passwords to remember just got very short: Be sure to accept updates to your password manager when they come out, as accepting updated software, which often includes security updates, is a vital part of keeping your information secure. Using different passwords for your many online accounts ensures that one compromise does not unlock your entire digital life.Ī password manager frees you from having to remember all of these long, unique passwords - instead, you can just remember a handful of sufficiently complex ones, and use the password manager to remember the rest of them and automatically fill them in for you. If it seems onerous, think about the last time you or someone you know had to scramble after spotting a surprise fraudulent charge on their credit card or discovering that they appeared to be the author of a few hundred spam emails. If you accidentally click on a phishing link, your password manager will not auto-fill your password – keeping you safe from a whole class of attacks.Īnd you only have a single complex password to remember - much better than scrambling to match new, longer passwords to your old browsing habits. If a stolen password is only used for the hacked website, you only have one password to change to regain your security.Įasy-to-remember passwords, unless made deliberately difficult (more on that in a minute), are almost always weak. ![]() The harder and less common your password is, the harder is it is to guess. Note: all software has vulnerabilities, and no password manager will be exempt from this.) Replace “fluffykins75” with “pond-trout-buoy-negative” or “robbery-stuff-smuggle-escape-petite” (two passwords I just quickly created via the 1Password Chrome plugin), use a different long password for each account, and the next inevitable breach will be much easier to handle. If you’re constrained by price, LastPass is a worthwhile free alternative, although we believe that good security is worth investing in. (At Truss, we use 1Password because we believe it to have the most relevant and robust feature set. Use a password manager and keep it updatedĪ good password manager creates lengthy, complex passwords and stores them for you, making them accessible on your computer, via browser plugins, and on your smartphone or tablet. It’s worth the time to go back to old, existing accounts and change reused passwords to longer, unique, more secure ones. Use randomly created answers for those “mother’s maiden name”-style questions that are sometimes part of identity verification when logging into an account. Use a password manager (we like 1Password and LastPass) so you can use complex, unique passwords for every account. So - considering human behavior and the limits of the human memory, what should you do? What you will learn:ĭon’t rely on trusty, easy-to-remember passwords - they’re easily hacked. And this can seem just fine - until you’re part of a breach, and someone has the opportunity to see if the password you used for is the same as (or even just similar to) the one you use for more critical accounts. The best defense against these kinds of breaches - lengthy, complex, and (most critically) unique passwords - goes directly against the default human mode of using a go-to password whenever you need to open a new account, something you know you’ll remember, especially if it isn’t for anything really serious. ![]() If you’ve ever used the same password for, say, your bank and LinkedIn, you have an idea of the risk here. The danger this creates is that, if one reused password is discovered via a hack, your go-to email/password combo can let intruders into other accounts throughout your digital life, possibly expanding the damage beyond a single breached site. (And if you don’t think you have, look at to check that assumption.) Most transactions online require a username and password to do business, which means that most people have, at least at some point, gotten into the habit of using those trusty old passwords that you only use for your most important stuff - you know, the complex ones that were just for important stuff, like your bank, email, and credit card. At this point, if you haven’t had a password leaked as part of a hack, you probably know someone who has. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |