Are you safe on the Internet?

Short answer: No, of course not. If someone with very good hacking skills specifically targets you, you’re hacked. However, that is very unlikely to happen. You are most likely to get hacked by a bot that someone broadcast across the internet. But it is really easy to protect yourself by doing a couple of things. First, make sure that auto-update is turned on. This will make sure that you have the latest security patches. The Experian hack happened because they were one patch behind. The second is to have strong passwords. Use passwords with upper and lower case letters, numbers, symbols, and more than ten characters long. Use a different password for every site that requires a password. Why should you use different passwords? Let’s suppose you use the same password for your Target account and your bank. When Target hot hacked, the hackers also got access to your bank account. Do not extend that kind of trust to anyone. I currently have 57 different passwords. Do I memorize all 57? Of course not. I only memorize one. I have a password safe app on my phone. That is the only password I need to remember. And the app is free. There are several other things you can do to help protect yourself. I will talk about those in another post. Oh yes, one last word about passwords, never, never share them with anyone.