How to practice good password hygiene

Don’t use your mother’s maiden name. Or your hometown. Or common dictionary words.

When it comes to protecting your online identity, your Facebook page, your Twitter account, and your bank account, Dave Peck tells GeekWire your best line of defense is a strong password.

“Basically, all of your security comes down to the quality of that one master password, so you really want to pick a good master password.”

Peck, one of the founders of Cloak, recommends an application called 1Password. “It’s a really great piece of software […] that stores all your passwords in a vault and what it can help you do is generate a unique and very strong password for every website that you visit.”

All it takes is one weak link to get hacked and soon someone could access your entire online existence.

“So practicing good password hygiene is one of the many things that you should do online these days,” says Peck.

When it comes to the accounts hackers will try to get at first, your email is likely the highest valued target. Sure, you’ve signed up for a bunch of mailing lists – getting updates from your favorite stores, a few emails from friends, but if you also send your emails to recover other passwords to that address, it’s a goldmine for online predators.

Once that hacker has guessed or obtained the password for your email, they can attempt to sign into your other accounts and attempt to recover those passwords. If you’re using something like Twitter, which doesn’t use a “two-factor authentication” system, that predator will be able to change your passwords in a snap.

“Pretty soon, they’ve got everything,” warns Peck.

While a strong password can help protect you from these hacks, don’t think that hiding behind a password in a wireless network will also keep you safe. According to Peck, if you’re in a coffee shop that keeps its wireless password protected, but offers that password to its customers, it’s only a false sense of security.

Anyone else using that wireless network, in the coffee shop or not, may be able to see what you’re doing.

Listen to this complete Digital Security Special episode of the GeekWire podcast here.