Don't Take The Bait

Do to the recent activity with companies being breached and email databases being stolen I thought it would be a good time to remind email users to be careful when reading email.

For those that may not know there have been security breaches at multiple marketing companies.  These include Play.com, Silverpop and more recently Epsilon.  One of the services that these marketing companies provide is email distribution for their customers.  The customers of these companies include but are not limited to McDonalds, US Bank, JPMorgan Chase, TiVo, Capital One, the Home Shopping Network, LL Bean Visa Card, Ritz-Carlton Rewards, Best Buy, Disney Destinations, Walgreens, Citi, College Board and many more.  If you have ever signed up with one of the above companies you may receive an email from them stating that your information may have been exposed to unauthorized access.  It is being reported by some of the companies that only names and email addresses were compromised and no personally identifiable information was released.

Because of the recent breaches you may receive more spam and phishing emails.  Click here to see a short guide that will help you to identify email scams.

As a precaution, I also recommend taking this time to review all of your online accounts to make sure that complex passwords are in use.

Change Your Internet Account Passwords

Lets be honest, no one uses "strong" passwords on personal Internet based resources. Following some basic rules to creating strong passwords can help keep your accounts safe. A recent post at Slashdot.org states that 26% of users use the same password for multiple important web based resources. Recently Gawker based websites were hacked by the Anonymous group associated with 4chan. If you had an account with Lifehacker or Gizmodo and used the same password for your email or banking site, then you may have a big problem.

Here are some simple guidelines for creating a strong password:

1. Use 8 characters with one capital, at least one number, and one special character. IE: Netw0rk!
2. Do not include personal information such as a name or address.
3. Do not use the same password on multiple resources such as email, social network, or bank website.
4. Try not to use the same password or variants when resetting the password on a web resource
5. If you have any suspicious activity on a resource be safe and change the password quickly. Also, if you share that password with other web based resources like mentioned above change them as well.