In case you haven’t heard: A hacker managed to obtain over six million LinkedIn passwords and published them on the internet.
Most of them are still encrypted, but as a precaution everyone should change their LinkedIn password. Now, if you think it is a problem particular to LinkedIn, I am sorry to tell you this: It may be easier for hackers to access your information than you think!
This is a good opportunity to look at your passwords across all your Social Media sites.
A few days ago, I was training a business how to use Facebook and the owner went into the administration part of her website and I noticed her password was only three characters long. I was horrified at how vulnerable her site was. A simple piece of software could access her website within minutes.
Almost every day I get a Twitter DM from someone whose Twitter account has been compromised. I really doubt that there are as many terrible blogs about me as people are claiming. At least the hackers have moved on from offering free iPads and sexual advice.
So here are a few simple tips to follow:
- Separate passwords for each Social Media site
- Used randomised characters rather than words
- use a mixture of letters, numbers and special characters
- use at least 8 characters, ideally more
- Change your passwords at least once every six months
I know it is a pain, but it is worth doing. I used to have one password for everything until someone started accessing my computer last year. It is amazing how quickly you can memorise random characters when you type them in enough times!
Let me know if you have any more tips.
Nicky Kriel
Nicky Kriel is a Social Media Coach & Trainer inspiring, educating and empowering Business Owners to use Social Media more strategically. She is also the author of How to Twitter for Business Success. For more information visit http://www.nickykriel.com or to find out about her courses that she runs in Guildford visit http://www.nickykriel.com/courses
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This is valuable advice. I’ve found that using a password manager has been invaluable – I’m on many social media sites not to mention numerous other sites that require a password, and it was becoming a nightmare to keep track of them all! I now use lastpass.com to manage my passwords