I am going through some personal identity security house-keeping and thought I'd share some thoughts on password/identity security.
This isn't meant to panic you and there's no known issue on this site.
I just thought it might be useful....it's also off the cuff and a quick brain dump.
For those not up on their IT security, I thought it would be good to highlight this site.
https://haveibeenpwned.com/ HaveIBeenPwned is an IT Security site which will let you know if your e-mail account has been listed, with *A* password on any of the known security breaches. Both of my key accounts are listed hence me doing something about it at the moment.
Identity Security is important because Identity Theft can leave you in a world of hurt through no fault of your own, money lost etc
If you use the same email & password for multiple internet accounts and are listed on this site then if it was me I would be looking to change my passwords to net new ones to make sure the association with that e-mail password combo is broken.
Password complexity and best practices. If you are looking to replace your passwords the best thing to do is make them memorable, but also make them LONG and not knowledge based (i.e. not your families names etc)
One easy to implement method of making them complex and easy to remember is doing something like this; Cat.Dog.Pony84! It's easy to remember the 3 words, put a dot between each one, capitalise the first letter of each word and then stick two random numbers on the end with a special character to finish off.
Other notes;
This isn't meant to panic you and there's no known issue on this site.
I just thought it might be useful....it's also off the cuff and a quick brain dump.
For those not up on their IT security, I thought it would be good to highlight this site.
https://haveibeenpwned.com/ HaveIBeenPwned is an IT Security site which will let you know if your e-mail account has been listed, with *A* password on any of the known security breaches. Both of my key accounts are listed hence me doing something about it at the moment.
Identity Security is important because Identity Theft can leave you in a world of hurt through no fault of your own, money lost etc
If you use the same email & password for multiple internet accounts and are listed on this site then if it was me I would be looking to change my passwords to net new ones to make sure the association with that e-mail password combo is broken.
Password complexity and best practices. If you are looking to replace your passwords the best thing to do is make them memorable, but also make them LONG and not knowledge based (i.e. not your families names etc)
One easy to implement method of making them complex and easy to remember is doing something like this; Cat.Dog.Pony84! It's easy to remember the 3 words, put a dot between each one, capitalise the first letter of each word and then stick two random numbers on the end with a special character to finish off.
Other notes;
- Never use the same password for your actual mail in ANY other place.
- Never use the same password for your bank as you use ANY other place.
- Personally, I am cool with using the same username and password for online shopping, it's convenient. And there are usually other checks and balances before my money can be spent. If the retail website doesn't allow for complex passwords, isn't using https etc then I would consider them a high risk and use a unique password for them...ideally, check out as guest only.
- Same again for social media and forums.
- You don't need to change passwords UNLESS you think they are compromised, frequently changing passwords is old advice and being phased out by NIST-800-63
- Use 2 Factor Authentication where it is possible. 2 factor means Username/Password + something you are/know/have. I.e. a 6 digit code sent to your phone. Or a Yubikey. Or PingID biometric auth. etc.
