Recently Yahoo Voices was hacked and over 400,000 email addresses and passwords were copied and published online. Was yours one of them?
Even if you were not a user of Yahoo Voices, it’s entirely possible that your email address and password have been compromised because Yahoo isn’t the only site that has been hacked. In fact, stories about website hacks are all too common these days.
Why not take a few minutes to click on this free link https://shouldichangemypassword.com/ and check to see if your password has been hacked. This site will check your email address against its database of over 11 million known and published hacked email addresses.
If you are a little skittish about entering your address, take a few moments to read through the FAQ’s they publish. I think that they have done a good job of allaying any fears about using the site that you may have.
Even if your address comes up clean, it would be a good idea to change your email password. And, if your email password is the same password that you use on other sites…like banking, change the silly thing right away! One of the things that hackers do when they get an email address and password set is to apply them against banking sites to see if they can gain access to accounts!
Stumped on what to use for a password? Go here to the free Symantec PC Tools Password Generator: https://secure.pctools.com/guides/password/ (You don’t need to be on a PC to use the site) You can use the tool to create passwords from 4 to 64 characters in length and with combinations of upper and lower case, numbers and punctuation.
Once you’ve got a new email password, you might want to consider changing your banking and other webs site passwords. To manage the pain of having different passwords, consider using a site like https://lastpass.com/ which offers free and paid software for all of your devices. You set up a Master password that you have to remember, but the software remembers the log in and password for all of the sites that you tell it about and it will automatically login you in to these sites. It will also synchronize itself between your Mac, PC, iPad and smart phones.
So, don’t just read this and think what a great idea this is…take action and get your online life secured. One day you’ll be glad that you did!
