Old joke: The average user types the correct password after the fifth attempt, but an average hacker picks it up from the third. Yeah, we don't think it's funny, either.
Everyone wants to avoid hacking because of the devastation identity theft can cause. But the truth is, unless you're multi-millionaire, you are unlikely to become an isolated target of a cyber attack. Still, no one can resist low-hanging fruit. If your accounts are vulnerable, they're likely to be hacked simply because it was too easy not to.
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Photo by Bernard Hermant on Unsplash |
Key sniffers and spy cams
If you can, use your password manager's autofill function to avoid entering passwords in public if you can avoid it.
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Photo by Jonas Leupe on Unsplash |
Stolen phones
Admittedly, this would require that a hacker have some knowledge of who you are, spend some time in your vicinity in order to lift a fingerprint, and be highly focused on getting to something in your specific phone. But if it's lost or stolen, you don't want to worry it's fallen into the hands of someone with the skill to break into it. Better to protect yourself using a pincode--and cover the screen when you enter it.
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Photo by Jan Antonin Kolar on Unsplash |
Stolen databases
Most of us have too many accounts to come up with a strong, unique password fro every one of them. But your password manager can both suggest and securely store safe passwords to ensure that even if one account was hacked, the rest are safe.
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Photo by Desola Lanre-Ologun on Unsplash |
Direct access your locked computer
It's important to encrypt your hard drive to make your data incomprehensible to anyone who does happen upon your running computer sitting at the login screen. And makes it almost impossible for anyone who steals your laptop or hard drive to access your data.
Encrypted or not, it's never a good idea to use the "keep me logged in" function on your online accounts. If entering your email and password each time is that much of a pain point, you need a password manager with intelligent web parsing to autofill your credentials securely and eliminate that pain point for you.
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