I was listening to the radio today, and I heard a fact that I found very interesting, and I find it to be something that everyone should know. Cigarettes are bad for you. Just joking. Well, yeah, they really are, but what I really heard, is that when it comes to passwords (like the ones you use to protect your email, or Facebook account) the amount of characters (letters or numbers) in them can make all the difference between it being hacked by mega-computer nerds or not. Basically, the fact is, a 4 character password can be decrypted by a hacker using special decryption software in under 2 minutes! Crazy! But a 6 character password takes 2 CENTURIES to decrypt! Which is even crazier!
So if your password is only 4 characters long, for any email client or social application that you use, CHANGE IT. Usually most social apps (like Facebook, Myspace) or email clients (like Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail) won’t even let you create a password that is less than 6 characters long.
I also feel like this is a good time to talk about clicking on stuff that you shouldn’t. The most recent thing that I’ve seen, is getting a message in your inbox that says something like, “Hey, here is that picture that you wanted to see (followed by a link).” You DO NOT want to click on that link. I even almost fell for this the first time I saw it. It’s pretty clever.
I don’t mean to scare you about any of this stuff. I just think that it’s good to be aware.
If you have any questions about any of this stuff, feel free to email me.