“Your passwords are the keys you use to access personal information that you’ve stored on your computer and in your online accounts.”
“If criminals or other malicious users steal this information, they can use your name to open new credit card accounts, apply for a mortgage, or pose as you in online transactions. In many cases you would not notice these attacks until it was too late.” (WikiPedia)
If fraudsters gain access to your passwords, it could have catastrophic consequences for to victim. Here are a few things to remember when choosing a password:
- When you sign up for a new website, don’t use the same password if it can be helped and certainly have a unique password for financial institutions. If your security on one website is breached, fraudsters could use the hacked password to access other online accounts.
- Strong passwords help keep you protected from malicious use of your accounts. I use a password generator for chrome which, using the websites domain and a user entered password, generates a secure password. If I am not at a machine with chrome and this extention installed, I can still get my generated password by using the Standford PwdHash Website. There is also a firefox extention available.
- A strong password will use a variety of letters(small and caps), numbers and special characters.
- Avoid using words in any dictionary, including words spelt backwards and common misspellings.
Tags: Fraud Prevention, Fraud Protection, Online Fraud, Passwords, Security
Nice content. Thank you for your information.
Thanks, here is some further reading.
Great post, very thorough discussion of the topic. Does anybody know where can find additional info on this subject? Thanks for any input.