The sad truth is if a hacker really wants into your account, you do not possess the ability to stop him. You do however have the ability to make it so incredibly difficult and time-consuming that a hacker just won’t bother trying because there are easier targets. But before you can learn how to slow down and frustrate the hacker, you have to know what it is he is after.
The vast majority of hackers do so to achieve a financial goal. This means they will target bank accounts, credit cards, or websites that may contain more personal information that could help them to falsify your records such as social security numbers or driver’s license numbers. You therefore want to be extremely cautious with what sites you are giving any personal information too. Here are some tips to help you keep from getting your accounts hacked:
1. Keep your personal information personal! Social networking sites have gained huge popularity in the past few years, but they have also spawned a breeding ground for the more nefarious internet users. Be very careful what information you post in your profiles on these sites as they can be a starting place for “market research” for companies looking to steal financial information.
2. Use different usernames/accounts for each website! Yes, it can be a tremendous pain to remember 15 usernames and passwords; but you should never reuse a password or username unless absolutely necessary. Why you ask? Let’s assume that someone hacks your twitter account, and seeing as they now have a username and password that you normally use, they decide to attempt to login to every banking site they can think of. Eventually they get to Bank of America and it just so happens you used your same username and password. They now have full access to your bank information, and you’re in a world of trouble.
3. Use secure passwords! Hacking software has become advanced to the point that hacking a password of “apples123″ will only take a matter of seconds. To help mitigate your risks of being hacked, be sure to use secure passwords. Some good password ideas are to use upper and lowercase characters together, use numbers (not in a definable pattern), and use special characters. You also want to steer away from dictionary based words. Some good examples of passwords would be “B@sk3tb@!!”, “Il0v3d@gs”, or “z3r0gr@v1Ty”.
4. Secure your home wireless network! With the proper software, all traffic sent over a wireless network can be captured by another computer on the network. What this means is, if someone drives their car to the entrance of your development, opens their laptop, and gets on your network, they can see everything you are doing. With that in mind, securing your wireless network is an extremely easy way to help insure your information stays secure. You should secure your network with WPA2 encryption, disable broadcast, and add MAC address filtering. Even with these precautions, it is still possible to hack into the network, but again, the goal is to deter the hacker to easier prey, and if you have done this for your network you are most definitely not easy prey.
5. Make sure you have antivirus/antispyware software installed (and that it is up to date)! Viruses and spyware can send your data to any machine in the world without you knowing it, so making sure your computer is protected is vital. New viruses are being created on a near daily basis, so make sure you update your virus definitions as often as possible to insure you are protected as much as you can be.
Protecting your online information is not something that should be taken lightly. Utilize the above tips, use some common sense, and your chances of being hacked will decrease greatly.