I received many questions after last week’s column about being hacked regarding passwords.  Some were about how to create good passwords and others like, “How do I remember my 194 accounts’ passwords?”

First, when creating passwords avoid the obvious.  Currently some of the top passwords in use in the US are qwerty, asdfgh, 12345678, your first, middle, or last names, names of pets, kids, parents, or significant other, birth dates, months, year of birth, street name and/or number, your car’s license plate, a difficult word from the dictionary, like ambrosia and the most obvious, “password”.  Are you using any of those?

Always use a combination of letters, numbers, upper-case and lower-case, and make sure the letters don’t spell anything … even backwards.  Something like “rQ7tXc5#T” would be good, but remember — you have to remember it.

Always use at least eight-characters in a password.  The odds of breaking one with eight characters are one chance in 2,821,109,907,456.  Hackers have tools which can hack any six-character password in less than 15 minutes, so always shoot for eight which could take years to unravel.   The first thing that it will do is run through every word in the dictionary, which only takes the first couple of minutes.  These apps also run the words backwards. That is the reasoning behind NOT using any word from a dictionary.

Make a cryptic password from a song, slogan, or quote with a date.  Use a slogan like, “Don’t leave home without it”.  Take the first letter from each word and blend in your year of birth.  You come up with something like “D1l9h6w8i!” and you have a fairly easy to remember but “un-interpretable” password.  Notice the use of different cases, numbers and symbols.  Also, notice the title to this column.  Use various symbols for letters.  You can use “@” for “a”, “3″ for “e”, the lower case “L” for the number one, etc.  Be creative, you are the only one who has to understand your secret code!

Don’t give your password to anyone!  If you check with your work IT or HR department you will find that many corporations have an immediate dismissal policy for sharing.

Last, but by no means least, watch out for people who are exceptionally skilled in reading keyboards…upside-down.  I have a coworker who has a doctorate in upside-down keyboard translation.

Now I will explain my amazing ability for remembering many, many usernames and passwords.  KeePass is a handy free program that will hold all of your usernames and passwords and protect them all with one password.  Just make sure if you use KeePass or one of the many other Password Storage apps that you use a super-duper password to secure that application.  I prefer KeePass since I have a Blackberry phone and the program has a Blackberry app that hooks the computer and phone together.  That way I have my usernames and passwords with me all the time.

Tags: password, passwords, safety, security, username, web site

I recently received a distressing email from Barbara, Broadway, VA, about being hacked.  Her email started like this, "Yesterday I got up, turned on my computer, and found that my Gmail had been hacked…"  Once they had her email address it allowed them to gain control of her Facebook account too.

Her passwords were not accepted and her alternate Gmail address had been changed to one that she didn’t own.  (Gmail and other online email apps use an alternate to contact you in case something detrimental happens on their site and they need to get a hold of you.  I have never had the need for one yet.)  The hacker had also gone on to delete her address book and all of her contacts in it. 

Of course, all of her email was deleted…or so she thought.  She found later, after communicating with Gmail that all of her Sent mail had been put into her Junk folder, so at least she still had those.  They had forward all of her incoming emails to another account of theirs.  If your Gmail account is hacked you may want to read this and check a few account settings http://bit.ly/9u1CZi.

Why do we get hacked?  As Barbara later discovered it was not someone local who got into her accounts.  They were hacked by someone or some organization in Nigeria.  The bad guys are usually hoping to get your bank account numbers, charge card info, etc.  They also may want to run scams on your friends, making them think you are excited about something the hacker can make money on.  The reasons are endless.

Barbara has not been the only one in the area to be hacked, so do not think it can’t happen to you.  Please take preventative action online or you may have some headaches.

At this time there isn’t any way to stay absolutely "unhackable" but there are things you can do to help prevent it.  First and foremost, make your passwords hard for others to get.  Make sure they are at least eight characters long.  Use upper case, lower case and symbols in your passwords.  Absolutely do not use the same password on all of your accounts.  If you do, when they get one, they get them all and your info is theirs!  Change your passwords several times a year.  If you don’t use an account, close it down.

I have over 194 different password protected sites I keep up.  Yes, I have a super-human photographic memory.  I remember each and every password for each individual site.  NOT! More about that in the near future.

Tags: Email, facebook, Gmail, hack, hacked, hijacked

Mentioned on the show this morning:

• Cup of Joe for a Joe
  
  Someone from home wants to say thanks and send you a FREE cup of coffee.
  
  Participation in Cup Of Joe For A Joe is restricted to active duty Armed Services Personnel deployed in support of OEF or OIF.
• Mystery Guest, Inc.
  
  Share your thoughts on a dining experience in chosen restaurants in your area.  (Not any in our area…yet.)
• PhotoWipe (main site)
  
  PhotoWipe is a revolutionary imaging tool that magically removes unwanted objects from your photos. Just paint over them in black, and click go! Uncovers hidden details. Sit back and watch as cage bars disappear from the zoo, and your old boyfriend or girlfriend fades away. And best of all, it’s completely free!
  
  Two other freebies are at this site too.  “Shark Ticker” and one with a good name going for it, “Banshee Screamer Alarm“.

Tethering your HTC phone may not always be possible.  It depends on the phone and the service provider.  But here is somewhere to start looking.  Google for your HTC phone and provider and see what will and won’t work.

Apple tells us about antenna attenuation.

What is Steve Jobs’ actual email address and will “he” be the one responding to you?

Hopefully get a quicker talk with the higher ups at a company by asking to, “Please, escalate this call.”

See you next month, Monday, August 16 at 10:00 am.

Ron

Tags: coffee, computer, doyle, escalation, google, HTC, java, Jim Britt, microsoft, Ron Doyle, soldier, Steve Jobs, tethering, WSVA

Last week we talked about the top online email programs.  Today I will discuss the top two I have heard about from readers and others in the area.

Although, Yahoo! Mail was listed as number one around the world, those I have heard from put Gmail and Windows Live Mail as their favorites.  Mine is not a very scientific poll since I used emails from you all and asked people I work with.  Keep in mind, the majority of my coworkers are geeks which could be skewing the results. 

Windows Live Mail (WLM from here on out) has two different address formats.  In 1996 there was Hotmail.com.  Then in 2005 Microsoft decided to revamp the name and add more functionality so Live Mail was born. Therefore, if you have an older account you have a "hotmail.com" address, while the newer members have "live.com" as their address.  Being the geek tester that I am, I have one of each but rarely use either.

With Gmail everyone has the same domain in their address.  They are all formatted as, name@gmail.com.  Gmail started in 2004 by invitation only and then went public for everyone in 2007. 

WLM  will very shortly (maybe by the time you read this) be expanding storage on the site to 25GB.  They will allow this for email and all other types of files with their "Live Sky Drive" app.  Gmail started out with 1 GB of storage and continues to expand daily.  It is now at approximately 7.5 GB.  The issue I have with Gmail is that the storage is not contained in one location.

As stated above Gmail provides an ever increasing 7.5 GB of storage for email only.  Google’s Picasa Web Albums offers 1 GB of storage for photos and videos only. Google Docs gives you 1 GB for everything else; all of your docs, spreadsheets, presentations etc.  You should know this free storage is not transferable from one product or application to another.  My belief is that Google will be merging them together sooner or later. It will most likely be sooner, once Microsoft finishes rolling out their 25 GB.

Both WLM and Gmail offer calendars, address books and more online.  One very important factor is that it is all free.  Of course, both offer upgrades in storage size for a charge.  The basics should be more than enough for the average user.

After doing a review of the two I found that even though I exclusively use Gmail; Live Mail has a lot to offer.  Of course, there is Google Voice but more on that another time.

Tags: applications, Email, Gmail, live mail, microsoft, online, yahoo

I get a lot of questions about online email programs.  I hear: Which one is safest?  Which one is best?  Which one has the better features?  Etcetera, etcetera.  I have to say that I believe a lot of those questions can best be answered by each individual.  You may have to try out several if you don’t use one as your main email program now.

I prowled around the net looking for the most popular programs and found the following as of May, 2010.  At that time, the most popular email websites according to “Email Marketing Reports” were Yahoo! Mail, Windows Live Hotmail, Gmail and AOL Mail.  This data is based on US Internet usage and is in descending order of popularity. First of all I wonder who does not have an email account by now.  However, I am sure new users hit the net every day.  Toward the end of 2009 there were a reported 1.4 Billion active email accounts in the world.  That works out to about one for every five people on earth.  So there are still many out there that have none.

Many users have multiple email accounts.  For instance, I have one specifically for this column.  I have another one for friends and family, an extra for online purchases and a final one acts as a “throwaway” account.  The last one is used when I have to sign up on a site for something and I know that it will create more spam.  I use it for what I need and then check it every week or so and delete all of the junk mail.

In some respects I realize that I am not that much different from other geeks.  I imagine that in reality less than 1/5 people have email accounts.  As an example, my wife, a non-geek, has two email accounts – one for personal use and the other for work.  I would imagine that is more the norm.

As for me I have tried them all.  However, some I haven’t looked at in years.  In the past I have  used all of the top four and still have those accounts active.  I know they are because I checked them this week.  Over the long haul I have chosen to go with Gmail.com as my main online email provider.  They have other extras I really appreciate although Windows Live mail is looking good.  Maybe we will look at that next week.

Let me know which online email services you use and like best.

Tags: aol, Email, Gmail, windows live, yahoo