How You Can Prevent Your Accounts From Being Hacked.

Up to 90 User Accounts.

Nineteen per cent of PC users have had their password leaked or have been the victim of an online account hacker. An average user has 90, yes you read that right, ninety online accounts, and these accounts can be anything from Facebook to online banking and keeping track of all the user login names and passwords can be a great hassle for most people.

Lots of people rely on the cookies in their browser to remember their logins, they never make a note of their passwords, nor do they bother keeping them in a book. One day the cookies were wiped and now lots of people are unable to gain entry to Facebook or any other of their accounts. Hands up if you are one of these people.

It Is No Fun Being locked Out.

I know someone that has got four Facebook accounts, all because he has locked himself out of the first three, and has failed at trying to do the account recovery thing. So he just creates a new FB account and leaves the old ones there because he is unable to get in.

This is very confusing for anybody that is following him on FB because nobody knows which of his accounts is the active one, and equally confusing for people that want to add him as a friend. You wouldn’t be able to do that if it was your bank account.

You just can’t create a new account, you would have to go through the kerfuffle of resetting your password and if you are unable to do that you would have to contact the bank by telephone, oh no I hear you shriek, not make a phone call and use some of my unlimited minutes on my mobile plan.

Then there is the risk of not having a hard to guess password, most people just use a simple password such as the word ‘password’. They then use this on all of their accounts, yes ninety of them as I mentioned earlier. Then they think no one will ever get into any of my accounts because only I know the password.

Account Break-In.

A hacker if determined enough, they usually are, will try to break into your account, he will only need your email address to do this and then will try the most commonly used passwords. How will a hacker find out my email address I hear you ask. Well, he won’t know it is yours, he would just have found this on a list of email addresses that have been harvested from the web.

You know how it is, you receive a funny joke by email, so you forward it on to all your contacts and they all do the same and eventually, your email address has landed in the inbox of a hacker. Then the hacker will have half of your login details to some of your accounts.

Facebook, for example, you can sign in with either your e-mail or phone number for your user name, and then enter your password. If you are receiving junk calls on your phone then your phone number is most likely on a list that is accessible to hackers, so for the hacker, half the battle is won, as he has half of your login details.

Then all that he needs to do is try to guess your password and he would have a list of commonly used passwords to hand and he will try these along with your e-mail address. Once he has broken into one of your accounts he will try your email address and password on other websites and if they match he will break into all of your accounts.

Commonly Used Passwords.

Below is a list of the top ten most commonly used passwords, if you are using any of these passwords, then you really need to think about changing it as soon as you can, because you have a high-security risk on your account.

• 123456
• 123456789
• qwerty
• 12345678
• 111111
• 1234567890
• 1234567
• password
• 123123
• 987654321

I obtained this list just by entering the search term ‘most commonly used passwords‘ into Google, try it yourself. If I can find it, and you can find it, then a hacker would be able to find it too.

So you need to think about creating a hard to guess and unique password, but you need to make it easy for you to remember it and also easy for you to remember where you have used it.

How would you create a hard to guess, unique but easy to remember password I hear you ask? Well you can make up a password by using the first letters of a phrase that you can remember easily, for example, you could use the phrase ‘My house is located in the borough of Anytown’ so your password from that would be ‘MhilitboA’ and you could then add some numbers that mean something to you such as part of your phone number and some special characters as well to make it even more unique.

Of course, you would have to make a note of this password and where you have used it so that you don’t forget it. You wouldn’t want to use it on more than one of your accounts because it wouldn’t be unique, so you would have to create another one to use on your second account, another for your third, and so on.

Keeping Track.

I just heard you shriek the words ‘Yikes, but I have 90 online accounts to think about!’ ‘How do I keep track of where I have used what?’ Well, you could always keep details by writing them down in a special notebook, this is ok but you could write them down wrong, we are only human and passwords are case sensitive, and need to match exactly as they are in the website database.

You also run the risk of losing your password notebook, what if you left it on the train or in the cyber cafe, your passwords are gone and your notebook has just been found by a hacker. You can, of course, store them electronically on your PC in Microsoft Word or Notebook, but this is inconvenient when you want to retrieve your passwords quickly.

If all of the above would prove difficult for you, then the solution for you would be to use a password manager, this is third party software that you can install on your PC and use to manage your passwords.

Using a Password Manager.

Password managers usually have an add on or extension for web browsers and are cross-platform compatible, meaning that they can be used on all versions of Windows, Mac, IOS, Android, Linux and all makes of browsers such as Edge, Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome, etc.

There are lots of password managers available today and they all come with a trial version so you can try before you buy to see if you would find it helpful in managing your passwords and if you can use the software.

I am going to recommend to you a password manager that I have been using for many years, since 2005, and one that I like so much that I have become an affiliate of, and that password manager is called Roboform.

Roboform is compatible with Windows, IOS, Mac and Android operating systems and supports all the available browsers and will work on your PC no matter what combination of operating system and browser that you are using.

There are many features of Roboform that I find extremely useful and I am going to go into great detail here to give you an understanding of how Roboform will benefit you.

Fantastic Features.

The first thing that I want to tell you about is the one-click login and password save feature. If you have Roborm installed on your PC the next time that you login to one of your accounts, Roboform will offer to save the login details so that subsequent visits to that exact URL and two clicks of the Roboform browser extension is all that you will need to log you in.

Password Generator.

Another great feature that I love and I know that you will love too, is the password generator, this generates unique and hard to guess passwords that you can copy and paste when you are signing up to a new service or if you want to change an existing password on any one of your accounts.

The image above shows the password generator within Roboform that allows you to generate very strong and unique passwords with just one click. As you can see in the example, the password generated is ‘bSj9aGwF$4AP3*8$’. It has 16 characters, upper and lower case letters, numbers and special characters making it extremely difficult for anyone to guess. You are able to change the criteria of a password by selecting any of the options in the advanced settings.

Bookmarks.

There is also the ability within Roboform to save your bookmarks, this I find extremely useful when I have moved to a new PC or I have had to reinstall Windows, my bookmarks from day one have been saved. You can import your existing bookmarks to Roboform from any browser that you have them saved on.

Roboform has a safe note feature too, so that you can save notes securely and retrieve them when you want them, for example, some websites ask you to store up to three questions and answers about yourself in order to identify yourself when you log in as an extra precaution, you can store these questions and answers on a safe note to help you in the future.

Form Filler.

Are you tired of filling out forms with the same info over and over again when you are shopping online or creating new accounts? Roboform has a form filler feature built-in, you just fill in you details once within Roboform, then the next time that you need to fill in a form you just click the Roboform icon in your web browser, then click your name and the form is filled in just two clicks, a very powerful feature of Roboform.

Roboform has a security checkup feature that will examine your passwords and will let you know the strength of them so that you can become more secure on the web and have peace of mind that your accounts are impossible to get hacked.

You can install Roboform and have unlimited user names and logins for free on any one device, the software will create an encrypted file on your PC with your user names and logins.

Premium Software.

Roboform Everywhere is premium software that will, for a small annual subscription, will synchronise your user names, logins, bookmarks and safe notes across all of your devices so that you can keep them all with you where ever you are, and never lock yourself out of an account again. You will only ever need to remember one password.

By clicking on the banner below you will be taken to the Roboform website where you can find out more and get a Roboform Everywhere account and prevent your accounts from being hacked.

Your Roboform Everywhere account will store your passwords in the cloud and they are encrypted under one password that only you will know so make sure that you never forget it or your passwords will be lost forever.

Many people are left wondering how their online accounts have been hacked and it is due to the fact that they have not taken steps to secure themselves properly, you can prevent your online accounts from being hacked by taking action as mentioned here in this article.

If you have had any of your accounts hacked or have had experience with password managers good or bad, perhaps you would like to mention them in the comment box below or you can ask questions about Roboform.