mikedopp.com

How secure is your Password?

Cyber Monday has come and gone and those of us that got all our goodies online are now awaiting for those special packages to arrive soon to be placed underneath the Christmas tree. How sweet it is.

However did you ever think identity theft and phishing sites are also on the prowl.

I know what your thinking this is another one of those ads for some service that will hold your ID safe like oh the craptastic ID vault commercials I hear all the time.

You ask what is wrong with ID Vault? Well I can’t say much is wrong. They have the right idea. However they pray on all those whom don’t understand how to keep themselves safe online.

Let just start with your online Password. I am sure where you work they have a password policy and even some biometrics set up so that the company as well as you are protected mostly the prior.

Truth is most people go home and start shopping online and surf over to walmart.com or my favorite Buylifetime.com for some goodies and the sites tend to ask you for a special thing called a user account. Given this you only really wanted to be on the web site for at most 30 seconds. However you are cool with setting up an account because it make you feel o’ so safe and your ready to buy. Here is where the majority of people run into the least secure part of their transaction. While every shopping site has a “https” or “Secure Certificate” the only thing that makes these sites “Secure” is they paid a lot of money to have a company like VeriSign to do research them and give them a “Certificate” saying yes this is the company and site they say they are. There is no secret tunnel that you are in. For mere argument yes you do change IP ports from 80 to 443 however those ports are still just ports for transport of information along the same internet we all use.

So now that I have you paranoid. Well you should and should not be. Whaaa? are you smoking something mike?

First No. Paranoia should be a good friend when you are on the internet. Millions of bits and not to mention the crap in those bits intermingling.

The reason not to be paranoid is most sites that offer the “SSL” or “Https” are typically safe and do a ton of work to make sure you transactions are safe. 

So going back to the reason for this article is make sure your passwords are STRONG! Can’t say that more. Having a Strong password will save your account from being hacked into like well Sarah Pallin’s Email.

The following little spreadsheet will ask you questions about your password not for your password and tell you how strong it is as well as how long it will take to crack your password.

Download from Drop.io(http://drop.io/BFTCalc)

Please be safe on the internet have strong passwords and remember the internet while it feels safe and your accounts are protected that doesn’t mean they are.

Rule of thumb: If your data is on the internet. It is accessible to anyone anytime no matter how locked down or safe a website says it is.

Anything is hack-able given time.