Skip to content

Secure your on-line identity

Recently on twitter I saw some 'tweeters' I knew of sending me garbage tweets and I asked them directly on Twitter "Did you send this"?

The answer was "no" and asked on Tweeter how come this is happening?

One answer was hackers trying to look for accounts they can break into. Another said that she was phished recently?

This reminds me of customers asking me did my account get hacked?

Seems like old habits die hard. Hackers are still trying to steal your online identity without a doubt.

As I pointed out at an evening presentation on 1 March 2010 do not make it easy for hackers to access 'crack' your password.

What is meant by that?

Let's examine 4 layers of password.



Level 1 - The Easy password



bear husband LOVER 19590112 &*)%%%!@!@



possible passwords but the one think they have in common is that a password cracker can most likely decode these.



Level 2 - Mixing 2 cases



Bear Dave bear123 !forget !$5%7*



All right maybe a little tough but the first 3 might be decodeable



Level 3 - Mixing 3 cases



SandyX45 1)2(abc Day$%^ q1@w3$



Maybe these are tougher but better yet



Level 4 - Mixing 4 cases



2@4$Date 6^Gu3T0 Gr3Ym!m!



Good luck cracking those .



For further information on security , check out http://www.grc.com/ and http://www.securityfocus.com/



For examples on phishing go to http://www.nk.ca/blog/index.php?/categories/25-Phish



What to do if you think you have been compromised



1) Update then run your anti-virus!! Most anti-viral programmes come with some ant-spyware. The key is update all definitions daily!

2) Run anti-spyware programmes. There are other malicious software (malware) that anti-viral programmes will not pick up.

I recommend you at least run 3

a) Superantispyware found at http://www.superantispyware.com/

b) Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware found at http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php

c) Spybot - Search & Destroy found at http://www.safer-networking.org/



These 3 programmes will find malicious software that is not viral yet can compromise your security. Again please update these daily.

Trackbacks

No Trackbacks

Comments

Display comments as Linear | Threaded

No comments

Add Comment

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
Standard emoticons like :-) and ;-) are converted to images.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
Standard emoticons like :-) and ;-) are converted to images.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA

Form options