I bet you use the same password for every website you register with.
Don’t worry, you are not the only one. In fact most active Internet users would use the same password more than once. Its just there are so many different website you register with, it can become difficult trying to remember all your passwords.
Little did you know, this also means you are incredibly vulnerable to various hacking attacks. Even if you have the strongest password in the world along the lines of: P4sSw0orD771bQ/
Lets imagine you are one of these people using the same password every time you register a new account. If I was to steal that password from you I would simply have to find out something you might be interested in. Lets say Football. What I do then is create a dummy website about football. When the website is ready I will drop you an email. This is where a bit of social engineering takes place. I would say something along the lines of: “Hey -your name-, I heard that www.dummyfootballsite.com gives away free tickets to world cup final bla bla bla. You should quickly sign up and grab one before its too late”
That person then goes and registers. I now have his password… to every single place he registered with. All I need now is to get into his main email account and get my hands on all sorts of usernames, pin number, accounts and transactions.
Don’t become a victim. You should now go and make sure you change all your important passwords to something unique.
May 14th, 2008 at 12:43 am
That’s exactly why I use different passwords and usernames for different things. It’s a headache but well worth it in the end.
May 14th, 2008 at 2:19 am
Great points. I utilize a software program that keeps all my passwords in a special encrypted file but I must admit I tend to use the same group of passwords for many sites. Your article gives me the motivation to set-up not only unique passwords but stronger passwords as well.
May 14th, 2008 at 4:25 am
Hi llia, great post. Everytime someone brings this sort of post to alert other users is one step more forward a better internet.
Blogged about
marketingeasy(dot)net/one-more-online-scam/2008-05-14/
Cheers
Lucio Ribeiro
May 14th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
I have an excel spreadsheet on my pc with different passwords for different sites and the list consists of a few hundred different passwords that I have collected over the years.
May 16th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Great post with some simple but very valuable advice. I have had a few accounts hacked in the past and it can be a real pain. You soon learn your lesson though.
May 19th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
Hiya Ilia, and thanks for the heads-up. Firefox has a pasword manager addon youn guys can try.
PS - Visited your friends site http://www.vahvat.fi/?lang=en
and gave them a stumbleupon review!
Cheers!