For most people who experience a password hacker in real life, they find out too late that using a strong password is important. Like the kid who think he is invincible and jumps off the roof because he doesn’t believe in gravity, having your website, Facebook account, or your system’s server hacked into is a lot like the ground smacking you in the face. Gravity does exist and so do bad people who would love to gain access to your life and wreck havoc.
According to a report, most users still haven’t answered the call by security experts to implement more robust passwords. In fact, in a list of the most easy to hack passwords, simply typing ‘123456′ took a truly forgettable top prize.
Security firm Imperva recently released its list of the passwords most likely to be hacked based on 32 million instances of successful hacking. Imperva named their report “Consumer Password Worst Practices,” and some of the entries near the top are truly simple and could lead to theft or identity fraud.
Top 10 Worst Passwords
The following is a list of the most predictable passwords, and should not be used under any circumstances (Source: pcworld.com):
123456
12345
123456789
Password
iloveyou
princess
rockyou
1234567
12345678
abc123
Hopefully you don’t see your current password on the list, but if you do or don’t, it doesn’t really matter. Most people have a simple enough password that it could be hacked by someone who knows what they are doing. Even if you have a better than average password, you may be like the millions who a. never use it or b. use it for every account they own. After all, who wants to remember all those passwords!
We’ve all received those Phishing emails from people trying to gain access to your various accounts, right? Facebook, MySpace, Banks, and Twitter. Well, if you fall for one of those emails and they figure out one password, they then check to see if you’re using the same password on the other sites too.
If you are using social media, most of your other accounts are visible to everyone so they can connect with you and that makes you vulnerable to getting hacked.
How to Strengthen Your Passwords
Other key findings in the report: it seems that almost 1 in 3 users choose passwords comprised of six or fewer characters; more than half use passwords based on only alpha-numeric characters; and almost 50 per cent used variations on their name, popular slang terms, or simple strings of consecutive characters from the average QWERTY keyboard — such as ‘asdfg’.
Imperva has made several obvious recommendations, suggesting most users adopt passwords with at least eight characters and to mix those characters between upper and lower case letters, numbers, and symbols. Passwords should be simple enough that they won’t be too easily forgotten, but the idea is to make cracking the code virtually impossible for either an unknown or known hacker.
About this article: Dennis Faas is the CEO and Chief editor of Infopackets.com: a daily, digital publication dedicated to MS Windows, computing, technology trends and solutions to real life computing issues: all written in simple English. Subscription to Infopackets Windows Newsletter is free. Visit us today! www.infopackets.com
So, how do you create a password that is easy to remember, unique for each account, and extremely difficult to hack? I want to give you the answer! Leave a comment on this post and let me know what you think. I’ll post the answer to the question soon.
Kirk Anderson
Guest Contributor
Kirk is owner of Interactive Business Solutions, a Business and Marketing Development Consulting company in Northwestern Wisconsin. He works with small and medium size businesses to to implement technology solutions that help a business become more productive and profitable. Interactive123.com
If you are like most people I work with you wish you had 36 hours in every day. What if I told you that in order to raise your productivity all you needed was a three ring binder, some paper, some tabbed dividers, and a few hours of time?
You’d say I was nuts right? I would have said that if you had asked me that question last year at around this time. Since then I have fully implemented the GTD system by David Allen. It’s been working really well for me – especially now that I have the luxury of a solid eight hours of sleep at night.
If you’ve tried to implement GTD in the past and failed then this article may help you get back on track. In this article we’re going to do a 60 second drive-by of the GTD system (or you can cheat and buy the official GTD planner).
Step One – Building the Planner
The first step is to build the planner. What I want you to do first is take those tabbed dividers and label them like so:
- Inbox
- Calendar
- Action Lists
- Agendas
- Projects/Goals
- Project Planning
- Reference
- Contacts
Once those are done put them in the binder. The next step is to head over to diyplanner.com and grab the official template pack. It’s ok to get the Classic sized pack because Adobe can scale them up to fit the letter paper we will be using. Print out the appropriate templates that you like and add them to the binder.
Next it’s time to brain dump…
Step Two – Collection
This is the best, and hardest, part of the process. In this step we are going to take some blank paper and write down every action item we can think of. The whole point of GTD is that you carry nothing in your head. If you are having a hard time remembering all the items you committed to than the list of incomplete triggers should help you out.
Step Three – Process Your “Amorphous Pile”
Now that your head is empty it’s time to sort and organize that amorphous pile of commitments into a system that allows you to do exactly what you need to do exactly when you need to do it. If you are not familiar with contexts I’ve included a sample list that should suit 98% of the people who read this article.
In your “Action Lists” section label a page for each of these labels:
- @Computer
- @Home
- @Office
- @Errands
- @Phone
- Someday/Maybe
- Waiting For
Now go through your pile and take each item one at a time. Decide what context you will perform that action in and determine if there is anything that is preventing you from doing the action at this time. If there is, then this action is not a “next action” and should be part of a larger project. If not, then add it to the context list.
Step Four – Update Your Calendar
Phew… the last step. During the processing of your pile you should have come across some items that had to be done on a specific day and time. These items do not go into your next action lists but instead on your calendar. Move those items to your calendar now.
Working the System
Now that you have a good system for organizing and planning the work we need to know how to work it. What I do is first thing every morning is look at my calendar and take note of the items there. Then I hit the next actions list and process them one at a time starting with my biggest context – @Computer.
If I am sitting in a conference room and I have 5-10 minutes before the next meeting I grab out the @Phone list and my cell phone and start ripping through the calls. Finally when I get home for the day I look over the @Home and @Errands list and see what I can knock out on those lists.
Do you have any practices that have helped make your more productive? If so, I want to hear about them in the comments!
Whoa! Google Apps just got even better…
“Every day, thousands of businesses choose the cloud. More than 2 million businesses have adopted Google Apps over the last three years, eliminating the hassles associated with purchasing, installing and maintaining hardware and software themselves.
We’ve found that when businesses begin to experience the benefits of cloud computing, they want more. We’re often asked when we’ll offer a wider variety of business applications — from accounting and project management to travel planning and human resources management. But we certainly can’t and won’t do it all, and there are hundreds of business applications for which we have no particular expertise.
In recent years, many talented software providers have embraced the cloud and delivered a diverse set of features capable of powering almost any business. But too often, customers who adopt applications from multiple vendors end up with a fractured experience, where each particular application exists in its own silo. Users are often forced to create and remember multiple passwords, cut and paste data between applications, and jump between multiple interfaces just to complete a simple task.” Source: Official Google Blog: Open for business: the Google Apps Marketplace
Go to the source for the rest of the article. You can find the Google Apps Marketplace here…
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I’m doing some informal research and I need your opinion on something.
Is your website accomplishing your goals or hindering them?
If you would like to participate in this simply leave a comment below answering the question. If you don’t have a website then I want to know that too.
My primary goal is to try and figure out how many small business owners have websites and how many of them are receiving value from them. Too often I see businesses put up a three page “digital brochure” and then leave it to languish on the Internet.
If you’ve been following this blog then you know that Todd espouses the value of business blogging all day long. In case you missed that fact consider this: blogs are more likely to reach the front page of Google Search results than a static HTML website is.
Oh, and to sweeten the deal I’ll be selecting three participants at random for a free website evaluation. What this means is that I will look over your website and then tell you what you did right, what you did wrong, and present some ideas for you to consider (retail value is $100 for this service). Having a second set of eyes on something could provide you with some real insight into improving your website.
The deadline to comment is 12:00 AM CST Saturday March 13, 2010.
Recently, a good friend of the blog told me about a tool called Xobni that integrates ‘contextual social media’ with your inbox…
“There are a number of email plugins that look to give you contextual information about the person you’re communicating with. The first one I tried (and arguably the best I’ve seen) is Xobni, an Outlook plugin.
There’s now a similar plugin available for Gmail users called Rapportive. Rapportive replaces the ads you normally see in the right-hand sidebar with a profile of the person you’re emailing with that is automatically generated by searching online services for your correspondent’s email address. Rapportive is only available to users that are using either Firefox or Chrome as their browser, since Firefox and Chrome have a plugin architecture.” Source: Rapportive replaces Gmail ads with useful social information
Need to get up to speed on Xobni?
“Xobni is a plugin for Outlook that adds advanced search and social functions to the email client. When we last looked at Xobni, the service indexed your email messages and created personal profiles for each of your contacts by automatically extracing phone numbers and loking users up on LinkedIn. Now Xobni has rolled out an update that adds integration with Skype, Facebook, Hoovers, and Yahoo! Mail.
Here’s how it works. You can search for email using the Xobni sidebar. When you click on a message, Xobni will pull up information about the sender, including information from Facebook, LinkedIn, and Hoovers. If your contact’s Skype profile or phone number are available, you can also initiate a call with the click of a button.
In addition to searching your Outlook mail, you can also have Xobni index your Yahoo! Mail, although in order to reply to messages you’ll need to login to the Yahoo! Mail web interface.” Source: Xobni brings Skype, Facebook, Yahoo! integration to Outlook
I use and recommend both of these technologies. Questions? Feedback? Comment, call or contact me to discuss how this applies to YOU…
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