Password No-no
Do you use the same email address and password as the login information on multiple sites? If so, you are in for trouble.
I have received a dozen or so calls in the past month from clients who thought they had a virus on their machines. Friends of theirs had been getting spam that looked to be sent by the client.
I got another one this morning.
In no case was it a virus, nor had the clients been hacked. What happened was a problem with password reuse. In each case, the client had been using the email address as a login on a different site and then using the password that goes with the email address as the password on that other site.
It’s a common and dangerous practice. Once the combination has been compromised, you are at the mercy of some malicious individual out there.
If you must use your email address as a login name, do not ever use the password you use to log in to your email account. Yes, password management is a pain, but not managing them can be a disaster.
Read more about the downsides here.
Cordially,
Steven
I have received a dozen or so calls in the past month from clients who thought they had a virus on their machines. Friends of theirs had been getting spam that looked to be sent by the client.
I got another one this morning.
In no case was it a virus, nor had the clients been hacked. What happened was a problem with password reuse. In each case, the client had been using the email address as a login on a different site and then using the password that goes with the email address as the password on that other site.
It’s a common and dangerous practice. Once the combination has been compromised, you are at the mercy of some malicious individual out there.
If you must use your email address as a login name, do not ever use the password you use to log in to your email account. Yes, password management is a pain, but not managing them can be a disaster.
Read more about the downsides here.
Cordially,
Steven