Almost a year I have neglected this blog. Well no more! My promise to my millions of fans.....
Anywho, the media is full of high profile hacks from the likes of "Anonymous" and "Lulzsec". But does it matter to the average PC user at home? Well, in a word, yes.
Lulzsec have been pilfering website databases and releasing the information for anyone to download, including email addresses and passwords ( I won't link it, but it isn't all that hard to find....). One of the sites hit was a porn site. Now I'm not suggesting anyone visits or registers on these sites (ahem), but the principle remains. The site was hacked, email address and password information was released. The problem? Not only could anyone log into the porn site as any registered user, people also started trying email accounts/facebook/twitter etc with the revealed passwords. And guess what? It worked!
Whilst this may have been "for the lulz", there are some serious security issues. If someone can read your email, they can also see where else you are a member. Do you use the same password for your online shops? I'm guessing alot of people do. If not, as the bad guy has access to your email, resetting the password and retrieving it is trivial. Anything that is stored in your emails is fair game, a scary thought.
I talked about creating secure passwords here, and recent events should make people think more about their online security. The answer is simple, do not use the same password across multiple accounts. there are many password managers out there which can help create and securely store unique passwords. I use KeePass, but there are plenty of other options (Lastpass, Password Safe etc), just Google, there are many to choose from.
Please, don't let "lulz" end up costing you more than a websites password......
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