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People aren’t the only thing that can get swine flu, your passwords can become infected by hackers on social networks.  If you are a member of Twitter or Facebook, then your passwords have already fallen victim to a high risk of being hacked and cracked.  Let me share a little password protection knowledge with you…

Did you know that when someone steals your passwords, they can use your name to open new credit card accounts, apply for mortgages, or pose as you in online transactions.  But, hackers really have fun when they gain access to your account on social networks like Twitter and Facebook.

When your passwords get hacked, online cyber thieves let loose malicious programs that take over your Facebook and Twitter accounts sending messages to all your friends and followers.  Just the other day, two of my Facebook friends had their accounts compromised.  Cyber thieves masquerading as my niece sent me an instant message on Facebook encouraging me to click on a link about a new weight loss pill.  I knew it wasn’t my niece because the instant message was sent to me when my niece was at work.  Had I clicked on that link, it probably would have unleashed a malicious program to all my friends and followers ~ an online version of the swine flu.

As a result of this new threat, I began researching ways to protect mine and your passwords.  I discovered there are software programs that will randomly generate passwords that will be so hard to figure out, the average hacker won’t waste the time.  You see, the average hacker looks for weak, easy to guess passwords.  Here are a few password protection strategies to use when you set up your passwords:

• Avoid sequences or repeated characters – Using  “12345678,” “abcdefg,” or “1111111” is not a good idea.  These are not secure passwords.
• Avoid using only look-alike substitutions of numbers or symbols – Cyber thieves are not fooled by common look-alike replacements.
• Avoid using your login name or any part of your name, birthday, social security number or any similar information for your loved ones.  Cyber thieves try these things first, and the first place they look is social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.  Another place they look is online resumes, so be careful where you post your resume.
• Avoid dictionary words in any language.
• Avoid online storage websites.  If cyber thieves find your passwords online or on a networked computer, they will suddenly have access to all your information.

These things may sound scary and may seem like you have little ways to protect your passwords and online identity.  However, my research led me to some Random Password Generator software that will generate passwords for you, solving the problem of having to think up new passwords for all your social network profiles.  These randomly generated passwords are so difficult to figure out that cyber thieves won’t bother with your Facebook and Twitter profiles.  It’s highly recommended that your password should be complex and that the strongest passwords look like a random string of characters to potential cyber thieves.  The Random Password Generator substitutes some special characters and symbols that look like letters, combining words and replacing letters with numbers to make your password complex and totally encrypted.   More importantly, keep your password a secret, don’t share it with anyone.

Screenshot of the Random Password Generator

Protecting your passwords online is a complex yet simple task.  It takes effort to monitor the security of your online identity, however it is to your benefit to make your passwords complex, thus protected.  There isn’t a flu shot for your protecting your password from the online swine flu, but you can take precautions.

The Advanced Random Password Generator (pwdGen) is a utility that provides generation of qualitative highly random passwords. Random passwords can provide higher security for your accounts. The program uses RSA crypt provider as a robust random number generator. The password generator can use different customizable character sets, user also can select length of the password. The program includes database for managing user passwords and costs $14.95.  The Random Password Generator program uses custom interface components and has a user-friendly look.

For your copy of the Random Password Generator, click here.

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