I am not a security expert, in fact the few facts I have picked up have been from my business partner and husband Dave Ockwell-Jenner, or via social media and newspapers. But I am getting frustrated with so many people taking short cuts where security is concerned and then blaming it on the equipment, or the Internet, or hackers!
If you consider every day security you deal with, such as locking the front door of your home, locking your car doors and and making sure your money is in a safe, or a bank then why do challenges arise when it comes to computer security?
Do you give your front door keys to a stranger to look after? Hopefully not, so why on earth would you leave your computer security wide open to the general public, your friends, family, or collegues?
One example would be when you write down your password on a piece of paper and leave it lying around for the whole world to see, or when you let someone use your computer and you share your password with them.
Recently there has been a lot of media coverage about passwords being stolen by hackers, and this cannot always be prevented, but the advice is normally to change your passwords immediately. Also if the password stolen was used in more than one place, i.e. Faceboom, Twitter, LinkedIn, your Bank, to name a few examples change the passwords on those sites too, not just the one impacted.
It's the short cuts that lead to further challenges, when people decide not to take the advice offered and are discover more security issues by not changing the password.
We all use online services these days and it is OK to put our information online, name, phone number, email, etc, whatever you want to share, but some of the websites are not as secure as others and may be able to see the password you decide to use for that particular site. I asked someones advice on how some sites do maintain security for your password, and the technical term here is: a hash function, which turns the password into a number and the number is always the same length. This simply means the site does not store your password, but they store the number created by their system.Tthey cannot see your password so it is as secure as it could be. I am not saying it will never be compromised as I am not a security expert. What I am saying is you and the site you are using are doing both working at being as secure as you can with the password information.
If in doubt this is a typical example of when you could if you want to, use the same password you use on other sites, but I normally recommend your decision is based on what kind of site you are logging into. I would not use the same passowrd for my bank information on a site I use for social media. My decision would be based on the what if's even though I was reasonably secure in the fact that the site did not store my password.
It is the short cuts that lead to challenges, not just in computer security but in every days things in our lives. Why not make our lives simpler and less stressful by being aware, and taking steps to ensure we are doing everything possible to help ourselves?
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