Is Your Password Secure? Should You Start Worrying?

Let’s be honest with ourselves, we have way too many online accounts. What do all our Facebook, LinkedIn, and email accounts have in common? They all need a username and password to log in, of course. If you’re anything like me, you most likely have three different passwords, if not fewer. Your password is likely a number that is significant to you like your birthday, car plate number, or your phone number. Maybe your password has alphabets, in which case, it’s likely your name or initials.

What’s The Fuss Surrounding My Social Media Password?

Why should I worry? I don’t have any banking information stored in my social media! But guess what, remember when we guessed that you have three or fewer different passwords? Chances are, your banking password is one of the three passwords you would be using for your social media and email as well.

Essentially, if hackers can access your social media, they can likely access your banking account using the same password. Maybe it was from a phishing incident you fell for, or a malware that has been tracking your key strokes. Regardless, your data and privacy are now compromised.

Moreover, even if you use different passwords for each account, you’d be surprised the amount of data is stored about each of us. If you didn’t know, Google and Facebook alone have knowledge about where you’ve been in the last year, the things you like and dislike, the videos you watch, even which events you’ve attended recently. All this information can be sold to questionable buyers, some of whom may try to scam you or even steal your identity.

What Can We Do To Keep Our Passwords Secure?

Needless to say, you want your passwords secure and your data private. Aside from obviously not using the same password for all your accounts, here’s a list of things to avoid when browsing through the net.

1. Know Your Websites

It looks like your usual social media website. It feels like your usual social media website. But if it has a slightly different URL, it’s probably not your usual social media website. Usually, scamming websites have a slightly misspelled URL that most people don’t notice.

They will usually be disguised as your banking website or social media sites. However, once you key in your login details, they will store your password and use it against you.

2. Look For ‘HTTPS’ In The URL Before Entering Your Password

Most banking websites have ‘HTTPS’ in the front of their URL. For instance, Public Bank in Malaysia, their URL is https://www.pbebank.com. HTTPS is short for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure. In other words, whatever data you key into the website is secure, and the website is the real deal.

3. Don’t Write Down Your Passwords And Email Them To Yourself

If you’re doing this, please stop. I know it’s easy to just remember one password and have access to everything else. But if it’s easy for you to get into your other accounts, the same applies to potential hackers. Just stick to remembering your passwords or better yet, set up a two-factor authentication (just like how you would do for banking) just to be safe.

I Followed The Steps, Are My Passwords And Data Secure?

Just because you do everything right, doesn’t mean you’re completely safe. Sometimes, legitimate websites have vulnerabilities too, which have resulted in data leaks. Example, hackers hacked into Outlook email accounts back in 2019, leaving millions of people’s data exposed. If that doesn’t scare you, maybe the three billion people who had their Yahoo accounts hacked would.

Anyone, anywhere with the right skill set can breach your data. So what can we do about it? Maybe we can start by looking at the people behind the lines of code. It’s no surprise that there are often loopholes and vulnerabilities, since coding is no easy feat. Hackers will then exploit these weaknesses and violate your data privacy.

This is why constantly updating your apps on your phone and laptop is so important. Companies find vulnerabilities within their system all the time. They then send security patches to fix the problem. The patches fix the security vulnerabilities, making your data more secure and less susceptible to breaches.

Who Should We Trust With Our Passwords And Data?

Ultimately, you should be wary of how vigilant companies are with data privacy. We trust legitimate websites and service providers with our data, but who do they entrust with our data? Are they engaging trustworthy individuals or companies to manage our data and protect our privacy?

You can even do a little reading and try to find out how secure their security really is. If you feel it’s not secure enough, you know when to stop using that website. After all, it’s better to be safe than sorry, considering you can fix a broken laptop, but you can’t take back stolen data.

At the same time, it’s important that the tech support tasked to ensure data security fixes doesn’t just issue a temporary solution, but resolve the root cause of the issue. One of the trusted outsourced tech support company, IP World Technologies does just this. IP World promises to get to the bottom of each issue and prevent data breaches before it even happens.

While we do our part to protect our own data, companies should also be responsible in ensuring our private data remains private. Companies’ tech support plays a vital role in data security. Without trustworthy tech support, our data and our personal safety could very well end up in the wrong hands. All in all, to be on the safe side, choose service providers with secure tech support.