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| Password Advice | |
| Posted By: Anton P. Nym (aka Steve) <sumpca@yahoo.com> | Date: 3/5/08 9:43 a.m. |
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Given what Louis posted up on the front page about hijacked accounts, here are some additional suggestions on keeping your Live account secure. You can set this up over on the passport.net web site. 1) Use a private email address, one that the general public doesn't know and that you don't use for MSN/AIM/GoogleTalk/etc, for your LiveID. That makes it much tougher for J. Random Uberjerk to guess. 2) Tie in an email address you check regularly as a secondary address for your LiveID, so you'll spot any weirdness like password change requests going on right away. 3) Do NOT use easily-guessed answers to Password Recovery "hints" questions. And yes, it's not hard to look up stuff like the name of your first pet or your favourite teacher in the days of Facebook. (And even if you do delete that information before using it, the Wayback Machine website might still list it.) If you do use one of these questions, LIE in some way that's not easily guessed but that you'll still remember. 4) As Louis pointed out, don't use words commonly found in the dictionary for your password. One suggestion; take an odd word, say a made-up one from an obscure novel, or a word from a foreign language and deliberately misspell it some way you can remember. Here's one time where 1337isms can come in handy... but don't use any you've seen. Homebrewed ones are best, especially if they're misspelled before 1337ing. 5) Change your password every now and then. 6) After going through all the above, for Forerunners' sakes DON'T SHARE ANY OF THE ABOVE ADDRESSES/PASSWORDS WITH ANYBODY. That includes clicking on links in emails that take you to sites asking for you to sign in with your LiveID. There are many fraudulent emails ("phishing") out there where those links are faked to trick you into giving the "hacker" your login information... so if you get an email from Live, say, it's better to use your own shortcut or type in the address manually to log in than it is to click on a link. -- Steve's hoping this will help folks beat the "hax", which are really (IMNSHO) combinations of phishing and social engineering.
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| Replies: |
| Password Advice | Anton P. Nym (aka Steve) | 3/5/08 9:43 a.m. |
| Re: Password Advice | sorahn | 3/5/08 12:00 p.m. |
| Re: Password Advice | Zerowind117 | 3/5/08 1:30 p.m. |
| Re: Password Advice | Domino Theory | 3/5/08 2:23 p.m. |
| Safari FTW *NM* | elpolloguapo | 3/5/08 2:26 p.m. |
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