ON THE WEB
Change your passwords every six months or so — An easy way to remember this is to change your passwords every Jan. 1 and every June 1. For passwords, use combinations of letters and numbers. Think of a grade school friend or teacher and the grade you two shared. If Mrs. Stallworth was your favorite 5th-grade teacher, your password could be S05tllwrth. That’s “Stallworth” without the vowels, and “05,” as in 5th grade, but mixed into “Stallworth” to make the password even harder to guess for someone with fiendish intentions.
“To protect “super private data, like financial records, encrypt the files on your computer with an encryption program like PGP (free 30-day trial; www.pgp.com; click on “Downloads”).”
–Michael Corrales, of online storage site Streamload.com
PayPal and other online institutions urge you not to download an attachment that purports to be from PayPal or your bank, for instance. If you’re suspicious about your account activity, call your institution’s toll-free number or go to its Web site.
Watch out for “splogs” — spam disguised as blogs. David Perry of Internet security firm Trend Micro: “For the most part, the ads are new pitches for old schemes — gambling, porn — and are posing enough of a customer nuisance that Internet giants such as Google and Yahoo are developing tools to clamp down on them. But in the meantime, do your part to sideline this annoyance by reporting known splog sites to Splog Reporter (www.splogreporter.com/; the first service of this kind) or SplogSpot (www.splogspot.com/).
ON YOUR PHONE
Go to your wireless carrier’s Web site and set up an online account and protect it with a password. You may never use the Web account to pay your bills or buy ringtones, but if your phone is lost or stolen, a thief won’t be able to use the info on your phone to break into your online account and steal financial data.
The Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association, the phone industry’s trade group, also recommends you call your carrier and verify that your account is restricted and that you have opted out of sharing any of your records with marketers.
IN A WI-FI HOTSPOT
Beware of evil twins. When you go to Starbucks or McDonald’s or any other public hotspot, ask someone who works there to write down the name of the network you need to connect to and the password. Some devious computer users sit at public hotspots and create fake network names, hoping you’ll log in to their computer so they can search your hard drive. This fate network name is called an evil twin.
Don’t do your online banking in public, or any other tasks that might reveal your passwords to sensitive information. Criminal-minded computer users nearby might be trying to intercept your data.
