Keep Your Email Safe From Hacking…
By Nigel Shapiro
In the past two weeks alone, we at RJS Consultants have dealt with three separate cases of hacked email accounts. Three! And every one of them caused real worry, lost time, in some cases financial risk, and unnecessary financial cost.
Email has become the front door to our digital and physical lives. It’s where password resets go. It’s where invoices, bank alerts, school messages, and family photos arrive. It’s also the first place hackers try to get into — because once they control your email, they can reach almost everything else you do online.
We are all at risk – every single person reading article is at risk.
The good news is that keeping your email safe is not complicated. In fact, with a few simple habits, you can protect yourself, your business, and your family from most online threats. You just need to make some simple changes.
But first of all, to understand why this is important, it is necessary to understand why hackers want your email. Most people think hacking is about stealing money, but often the real target is your identity.
Your email most likely contains more details about you and your life than you realise.
Just a few of the likely details that they can glean…..
- Personal details
- Friend details
- Shopping details and habits
- Bank account details
- Business clients (if this is a business email address)
And with this information, the hackers can:
- Reset passwords on your other accounts
- Send fake messages to your contacts to bring them into the net
- Trick friends or customers into sending money
- Search your inbox for personal details
- Access cloud storage, photos or documents
Once they’re in, they move fast. They grab your email and details. Sometimes they delete your email. Sometimes they redirect your email to themselves, so that you stop receiving emails. Often they will reset your login details so that you completely lose access to your email address.
And how do you prove to the email service that you are the rightful owner once they change the ownership details on the account?
As you can quickly see, stopping their access is the best preventative measure.
Prevention really is better, simpler, cheaper than cure.
And the sad reality is that this really is simple. If everyone took these simple steps, the hackers could be stopped in their tracks.
The key is your password. It doesn’t have to be hieroglyphics or impossible to remember.
Many people still use simple passwords such as names, birthdays or the same password for every website. It feels easy — until someone steals it.
Hackers don’t guess passwords by hand. They use huge databases of stolen passwords and run them through software at high speed. If your password is on one of these lists, your email access can be cracked in minutes.
To thwart this, your password just needs to be at least 14 characters long and meet the following guidelines:
- Use two, three or four random words, interspersed with a number or link character(s). For example “Red3Robin8Bolney”
- Avoid personal details
- Never re-use it on other sites
Simple!
There are other things that you can do to protect your access to email, which I can go into more details at a later time, but this one simple change will certainly significantly reduce the likelihood of your becoming a victim.
Please, please, do not think “It won’t happen to me”. Every accident happens to somebody saying “It won’t happen to me”.
Don’t join the multitude of victims as a result of your inaction.
By Nigel Shapiro, owner of RJS Consultants, an IT Support company that started in 2003 providing technology support to micro-sized companies and private individuals.
Help on this topic, and other technology assistance can be found at www.rjs-consultants.com, or by calling 01444-812412.
