This is the tech-y email you need to pay attention to.
Fraud and identity theft is at an all time high right now.
“But Stephen, I’m good. My security is on point!”
It might be. Until it isn’t.
People have weak ass passwords. They have old mobile numbers and email addresses attached to accounts they use daily, and allow absolute fucking weirdos who they have never interacted with before, to follow them on their social media platforms as “friends”
That is only scratching the surface of how weak everything is in general.
(I won’t go into AI duplication, and social engineering because that is a whole universe of horror in it’s own right)
But don’t forget. Size matters when it come to password security.
As of this year. Comparitech’s report highlights that 65.8% of compromised passwords were under 12 characters in length, which is the minimum that “most experts recommend.” On the flip side, only 3.2% were 16 characters or longer. Understandable, considering that it’s difficult to remember multiple long passwords without a password manager.
But password managers of weirdos.
Anyways.
The reason I’m telling you to make sure you’re updating your email address security is, the amount of people who have had whole account jacked because of piss poor security is off the charts.
You see people’s accounts on social media get taken over and in most cases, especially the online space, their livelihoods are stripped because of it.
It’s not a fun thing to do.
If you’re making a brand new email address. Make sure you log into all of your accounts that you use and manually update those accounts to your new email address. Followed by re-verifying two factor authentication and all of that bullshit. Also make sure you never re-use a password (I know we’ve all been guilty of it) and even if you need to re-use a password and add a little variation spice to it. Add some extra characters/symbols or whatever. But with a new email address PLEASE make something incredibly complex and tattoo it into your frontal lobe.
Same thing applies if you’re gonna change your mobile number in the new year. (New year new me lol)
The same day you decide to do it. Log in to all of your important accounts and remove two factor authentication and delete that mobile number. Then once you have your new mobile number, go back in and re-activate it all.
Yes I know it’s a pain in the balls but hey, it has to be done.
It’s getting increasingly harder to stay secure.
And the only way to stay full secure is to set everything else on fire and go live in a cabin in the woods. (Still subscribed to my emails though)
Stephen Walker.
P.S. Always a fun little read to scare yourself into security submission
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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom