In an online world we are all more connected than ever before. For all of us, especially businesses, sometimes this is a helpful thing but also it can be a dangerous thing, unfortunately it’s the latter that I am discussing in this article.
We all know about password security but sometimes in our busy working lives we ignore the potential dangers because “everything is ok”, and we are busy getting on with day-to-day things, however occasionally problems can arise because of our lack of vigilance. We all have so many accounts nowadays (email, Facebook, What’s App, MyFitnessPro etc.) it’s very tempting to use the same details across all of them.
I have read, recently, about several people who have been victim to scammers because they were using a password that had been compromised, this is called being “pwned” – when an email address and accompanying password falls into the wrong hands because the server storing the information has been a victim of a hacking.
There are services available – https://haveibeenpwned.com – that can help you discover whether information that you have used on an online service has been compromised. Just enter your email address and hit “pwned?” this website will report if your email address has been downloaded (together with the password that you used for the service listed) by hackers.
If your email address has been downloaded then you should immediately change your password for the service listed, ALSO (and this bit is important), if you use the same password on other services then go and change your password for those services as well. As a rule, you should never use the same password and email address combination for more than one service. There are freely available password management tools that will allow you to store the increased number of passwords that you will need to “remember” by following this advice.
As always, if you need any help or have questions relating to any of this stuff then please just get in touch.