It seems so unfair: Though it’s difficult for us honest folk to remember all of the passwords to all of the sites and software we use, losing control of them is a big security issue. Here’s some advice to help you avoid two common security problems involving passwords.
Easy-to-Guess Passwords
Why You Should Care: Your passwords are the keys to everything you’ve locked inside.
These days everyone has a LinkedIn account, a Facebook profile, and a Twitter feed, and these information middens make it all too easy to guess the answers to commonly used security questions such as the high school you attended or the name of your dog. You may have blogged about both of those things half a dozen times or more.
Password Protection With Public PCs
Why You Should Care: You may have to use dangerous public PCs in a pinch.
Scenario: While on a business trip, you check your e-mail at the PC in your hotel’s lobby. Here’s why you shouldn’t: It’s distressingly common for public PCs in places like schools, cybercafés, trade shows, and libraries to be infected with password-stealing Trojan horses. In many instances these public PCs are not closely monitored by their owners, so they tend to get infected often and to be cleaned of infections infrequently. And since scores of casual visitors use them to log into e-mail or other services, data thieves view these PCs as an efficient source of harvestable information, which they then sell to spammers and other unsavory types.
To protect yourself from malicious software that may be lurking on a public PC, scan the machine with the portable (and free) ClamWin antivirus software, and carry your own customized (and portable) browser, office apps, IM clients, and secure file-transfer tools. There’s even a useful password manager tool; after all, PC World’s Security Alert blog recommends that you change, as quickly as you can, any password that you’ve entered while using a public PC.
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