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Shopping online this holiday season? If you’re using the same password on each site that you use for email, online banking and bill paying, you may indeed “give the gift of giving”—to hackers.
What if someone could log into your email account? What could he find out about you?
Your mom emails you twice a day—he now has your maiden name.
You send coworkers photos of new puppy, Fluffy—he now has your pet’s name.
Are you registered online with a particular bank? Do your Amazon.com shipments come to your home address? Did you lose the password to your credit card’s Web site, prompting an email reminder to you?
Your emails can offer as much information to prowlers as if they had broken into your home—better—because all of your information is in one place—complete with a search feature. “For most people, possessing the password to someone else’s email account would seem fairly innocuous,” says Thomas Madden, chief information security officer for Information Technology at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. “However, access to your primary email account could allow a less honest person to reset your password to that or other accounts without your knowledge.”
We’d like to think no one would hack into our accounts, but plenty of people welcome such an opportunity and profit from it. “Access to banking or financial sites are among the most sought-after identities, and frequent targets for hackers via key-logging or password-caching malware,” says Madden.
So, how can you keep your information safe? Simple: the non-decodable password.
The most important criterion for your password is that it’s memorable. You must be able to memorize it. Jotting down your password on a post-it note and sticking it on your monitor next to the grocery list defeats the very purpose of a “secret password.” You wouldn’t leave the key to your house dangling from the lock— on the outside. Madden explains writing down a password or storing it in a file on a computer can allow for someone else to gain access to accounts and personal information.
“The days of keeping your password on a notepad or stored under your keyboard (think key under doormat) have long passed. Similarly, keeping passwords stored in a file for archival purposes should be avoided at all costs. Password files stored in central locations or even on PDAs or smart phones, are subject to loss of the confidentiality and integrity of the file.”
When you don’t write down your password, there’s only one place to keep it—your head.
Are you ready to create your super-secret, non-decodable password? First, let’s forget the “word” in “password.” Someone’s going to need more than a word to get to the most vital information about you.
Forget about your spouse’s name, pet’s name, phone number, birth date—forget about actual words. It’s time to get a little more creative. Think about something you do on a regular basis and come up with an easy to remember phrase. Try something such as:
It’s no ‘Fluffy123’, but easy enough to remember, right? Once you’ve created and changed your password, check to see how it fares with Microsoft’s Password Strength Checker.
You’ve probably just come back to reading this after going into your account settings and changing your password from ‘John123’ to something that resembles a comic strip curse word. You’re feeling pretty good about this password of yours; no human nor computer could ever crack this one. But before you go into your account settings and make it the password for every Web site you’ve joined since 1995, go back a few steps.
You don’t need an exclusive password for every account you have, but if someone manages to crack the one you’ve just created, you won’t want him to have access to your personal World Wide Web. Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Many people have the same password for all their online accounts. Having different passwords, however, will help keep your information safe in the event one of your accounts is compromised.
To help remember multiple passwords, try tacking on a letter or two that represents the Web site you’re accessing. Take the password we already created, ‘M!Twww2q’ and make it exclusive.
Now you have nonsensical and exclusive passwords – that you can remember.
Your new passwords are so creative and practically non-decipherable. Congratulations! So don’t go around telling anyone. Now that you have your new top-secret passwords successfully stored in your head, you must make sure they remain secret. Madden adds, “Just remember that your password is representative of your online identity.”
Follow these six steps to keep your passwords safe:
HaPPy h0L1d@y$ !!
Last Updated: 12-09-2009Editorial Board | Legal Disclaimer | Privacy & Security | Contact Us
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Eating healthy
reverses metabolic syndrome
Dr. Tasnime Akbaraly of University College London and her colleagues were interested if healthy eating could actually turn-the-tide and reverse metabolic syndrome, which is having 3 or more of the following risk factors: excess abdominal fat; high triglycerides, hypertension, low levels of HDL the “good” cholesterol, or type 2 diabetes. Having metabolic syndrome doubles a persons’ risk of heart disease and greatly increases the odds of developing type 2 diabetes.
The researchers studied 339 British civil servants with metabolic syndrome, and how closely the adhered to the Alternative Healthy Eating Index (AHEI) to see if it could help reverse metabolic syndrome. The AHEI is a set of published nutritional guidelines by the Harvard School of Public Health in 2002 that emphasizes whole grains, fruits, vegetables and decreased red meat consumption.
Five years into the study, nearly 50% no longer had metabolic syndrome. People who followed the AHEI guidelines the closest were nearly twice as likely to have reversed their metabolic syndrome. The results of the study were published in Diabetes Care, online July 29, 2010.
Dr. Alice Lichtenstein, an expert on diet and heart health from Tufts University in Boston who was not involved in the study said, "It's not about focusing on individual components of the diet, it's really the whole package, and that becomes important because it means that if one of the components of a healthy diet is to eat more fruits and vegetables, just buying a pill saying that there's a concentrated extract of fruits and vegetables is probably not what's going to help you."
Call and make an appointment with Wellness Coach Sam Hester, CWC, CPT, LWMC, at 713-500-3327. It's confidential and free. For more information on the wellness services provided, visit UT Counseling and WorkLife Services.
