How many of you have installed some piece of Internet-enabled equipment in your home?
And how many of you have left the default password the same on the device, thinking “who bothers with that kind of thing?”
Tag: passwords
Web Watch has told you about how to make your online passwords harder for hackers to easily guess.
But apparently, people are still not paying attention. Yet again, we’ve hearing news reports of leaked hacked passwords list, and “password” and “123456” are still at the top of the list of passwords being used.
How bad is this? Maybe it all depends on which websites you’re using it on.
Web Watch has covered password hacks like the recent ones at LinkedIn, eHarmony, Last.fm, and others.
We’ll start with the standard recommendation: if you’ve been using one of those sites Web Watch just mentioned, please go and change your password immediately. It’s okay… we’ll wait.
And you’re back…
As a reminder, some of the password suggestions we’ve made in the past can be found here:
and there are others.
So since we’ve already talked about the things that you should do to change your password and how to make a nice strong password, the next question to ask is whether the password you’ve selected is actually strong and unique enough to avoid being hacked.
When it comes to Customer Service, what retail companies come to mind?
We’ve heard countless stories about companies like Costco taking back anything that they sell, no matter how long ago you purchased it… but while Costco is an awesome place to shop, the long lines and lack of salespeople on the shopping floor can turn some potential shoppers off, as getting out of there with a purchase can be a bit more difficult than it needs to be.
Web Watch enjoys the staff at the local Home Depot and Lowe’s, but there are times when both stores struggle to answer our seemingly simple questions.
We do’t ask for much – we just want each shopping experience to be superior to the last outing.
Web Watch was visiting an office a few weeks ago when the people we were visiting were trying to log onto the shared computer in the conference room.
They thought they knew the password, but something wasn’t right. After about 20 minutes of trying, they called their IT guy for help. He walked in, went over to the computer, and read the correct password off of a Post-It Note that had been taped to the machine specifically for this purpose.
This was in a high-security building, in a room that only a few people had keys for — and the password was taped to the machine for anyone to use. It probably wouldn’t be a problem, as many people would need to use that same computer, but we’ve been told for years not to post passwords on Post-It Notes.
My Top Secret Passwords notepad
With all the recent news about hackers breaking into major sites and stealing usernames/passwords, it was only a matter of time before some enterprising person would compile all those released databases and provide a practical service.
Computer Biometric Finger Scan
Password security is an oft-discussed topic here on Web Watch – we’ve covered it with a list of the most common passwords, how kids select passwords, and how “TIGGER” is not a good password, among other topics.
So when some more password analysis became available due to the recent security breach at Sony, Web Watch felt it was important to share again how bad people can be with picking passwords — which should help reiterate how important it is for our Web Watch readers to have a good password policy of their own.