Also turn on two-step verification.--Joe
From: viphone@googlegroups.com [mailto:viphone@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Sieghard Weitzel Sent: Monday, January 14, 2013 11:15 AM To: viphone@googlegroups.com Subject: SPAM email, hacked email accounts and password safety Hi List, I have seen this before, it is clearly SPAM and since Anna is a legitimate list member it probably means somebody hacked her account. This is why I am also forwarding this message to Raul directly in case he didn't have time yet to read it. Hopefully he has a way to contact Anna or maybe she will read this post. She needs to change her password immediately and I would probably hazard a guess and say her password was probably a fairly simple word. I can only stress again how important it is for people who use a word even if it is 8 or 10 characters long and contains maybe a number or 2 to change it to a random password with upper case and lower case letters, numbers and symbols. Not all websites allow symbols, but if they do use them. Here is a good article about password strength and it contains a method I have been using for some time. The article gets a bit technical at times, but I encourage everybody to read it anyhow: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Password_strength#Creating_and_handling_passwor ds In section 5.2 a method called "mnemonic passwords" is described like this: Password policies sometimes suggest memory techniques to assist remembering passwords: mnemonic passwords: Some users develop mnemonic phrases and use them to generate high-entropy (more or less random) passwords which are nevertheless relatively easy for the user to remember. For instance, the first letter of each word in a memorable phrase. Silly ones are possibly more memorable. I suggest not to use a well-known quote like "To be or not to be, that is the question". Use something out of your life that makes sense to you. For example: I really like Clive Cussler books, for those who aren't familiar with them the 2 main characters are Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino, one of my favourite books of his is called "Inca Gold", it was first published in 1994. Using this information I make up the following sentence: Inca Gold is my favorite Cussler book; Pitt and Giordino are awesome! 1994 Note I used upper case for the first leeters of the book title"Inca Gold" and capitalized the first letters of all the names. I used a semicolon in the middle of the sentence an exclamation mark at the end and I stick the year when the book was published at the end. This sentence contains 12 words, 2 symbols and 4 numbers. If I use the first letter of each word, the 2 symbols and numbers it gives me an 18-character password. I know this may be too long for many and it's sort of a pain to enter it especially on a virtual keyboard, but this is just an example although you should use at least 12 characters to have a really secure password. If I were to use this, the resulting password would be this: IGimfCb;PaGaa!1994 I do actually use 14 to 18-character passwords for iTunes and other sites where my credit card is stored, entering them becomes pretty easy after you do it a few times and on the PC I use Roboform to fill them for me. Anyhow, I think my point is clear, a sentence like this is easier to remember than a 12-character password generated by a random password generator, but it's just as random to anybody else or to a password cracking program. OK, enough said, keep save online and for those who have kids, teach them not to use their best friends name or birth date as a password, if you use this method coming up with good passwords becomes a habit like brushing your teeth. Regards, Sieghard -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the "VIPhone" Google Group. To search the VIPhone public archive, visit http://www.mail-archive.com/viphone@googlegroups.com/. To post to this group, send email to viphone@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to viphone+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/viphone?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the "VIPhone" Google Group. To search the VIPhone public archive, visit http://www.mail-archive.com/viphone@googlegroups.com/. To post to this group, send email to viphone@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to viphone+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/viphone?hl=en.