Daily Dose of Common Sense

Sometimes we make it easier on the bad guys.

Many computer users prove themselves easy targets for hackers and identity thieves. First, we learn that “123456″ is the most common password in use today.

Imperva found that nearly 1 percent of the 32 million people it studied had used “123456″ as a password. The second-most-popular password was “12345.” Others in the top 20 included “qwerty,” “abc123″ and “princess.”

Not exactly hacker-proof. Instead, pick a password of a letter and number combination that is at least six characters long.

Second, we learn that many adults put their full addresses in their social media profiles.

In one example, the study commissioned by a unit of credit reporting services firm Experian found that 14 percent of adults – and 20 percent of those age 60 and over – listed their full home addresses in their social media profiles.

Now, I’m not suggesting that putting your address online guarantees a robbery. (See our recent post “Do Thieves Read Twitter, Too?”) But, do you really want anyone, and we mean anyone, knowing where you live? Identity theft, junk mail, stalkers, past girlfriends, Jehovah’s Witnesses… you open yourself up to a variety of ways to have your personal domain invaded.

Don’t make it easy on them. Make the bad guys work harder and perhaps save yourself some aggravation down the road.

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 25th, 2010 at 8:40 pm and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.