Friday, March 7, 2014

Are you changing your passwords?

There are some sites where I have had the same password for YEARS.  No lie.  Then you hear about all this
identity theft, security breaches at departments stores, millions of credit card numbers stolen .. it's frightening!

So, I finally bit the bullet and started changing the important passwords.  The less important passwords will be changed more gradually.

Do you worry about it?

Mostly I really haven't.  But lately I've gotten several emails that look SO authentic, asking me to sign on to various accounts, for all kinds of reasons.  Most banking sites, PayPal, etc - will tell you - we will NEVER send you an email asking you to click on a link to sign in to
your account.  So when I get one of those emails, I marvel at how
real they look.

Remember the days of misspelled, badly written emails trying to convince you to reply with personal information?  Those are still around, but these days there are many more sophisticated fakes coming your way.  Don't do it.  Even if the email address it comes from looks real, don't fall for it.  If you think your financial institution really needs information from you - go onto their site the normal way, NOT using your email.

And start changing your passwords.  Unfortunately - you need to make them HARD.


1 comment:

  1. I am bombarded with them, probably because I have a number of emails and accounts. Yes, remember when they were badly misspelled and we could sift through them. I know my delete key and don't even have to look for it on the keyboard. Just think, I have these coming wanting to rent a room, problem is you can't treat them as they are spam until you know for sure and they are getting better and better at sending mail these days sometimes it takes 2 emails before I've caught on, first being suspicious and the second being delete.

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