Riddle Me This: No Joking Matter

The Penguin, The Riddler, and The Joker.

Q: What is something that everyone should know but never tell anyone else?
A: Your password.
Passwords should be an important part of your digital experience. With password protection comes security and the peace of mind that our private stuff stays private. We have passwords to protect our e-mail accounts, our social networking accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, etc.), our financial accounts, and lots of other information considered private and confidential by most people.We should also have passwords to protect access to our computers, our tablets, and our smartphones, too.

Not all passwords are created equal, however.

The longer and more random the password is, the better, according to security experts. Mix in letters, numbers and symbols together to make it difficult for someone to crack your personal code.

Don’t use your name or anything that would be easy or obvious to guess, including a pet’s name, your birthday, your spouse’s name or your children’s names.

There are several good software programs designed to help you set up and keep track of all of your password info.

One of the most popular is called Roboform. Here’s a link to a Roboform review by CNET.

Google Yourself
To learn what anyone with a web browser can find out about you, Google yourself. It may be surprising to learn your phone number, home address, work-related details and even your marital status may be out there on the Internet for anyone to see.

If someone you didn’t know and didn’t trust had the same access to the rest of your personal information as you do, what damage could be done? Just think about the worst that could happen. Scarey, huh? Cyber criminals prey on the uninformed and the unprotected, so taking a few steps to safeguard yourself now could prevent serious impacts later.

Business users should check out this link for more information on proper security measures to help small companies protect their digital data.

DriveSavers provides secure and confidential data recovery service to all its customers, from government agencies, financial companies and big business to mom-and-pop shops, consumers and students.