Linda posted on June 09, 2010 15:58
Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the security of my email password. You see, in the last two months or so, I have received emails from friends that I knew were not messages they would have sent me in a million years. I notified one immediately, who changed his password and that resolved the issue. I did not notify the second one until I had gotten more than one email from her address. She too changed her email password and the messages stopped.
Just today I received an apology email from someone who apparently had her account compromised, although I had not received any messages from her. That was followed closely by an inquiry from someone who was getting calls that they were sending spammy emails.
Today's events reminded me that I have been meaning to blog about making sure your email password is secure. Recently I read an article that talked about how important it is to select strong passwords, but I am betting that if you aren't forced to use a strong password, you probably won't.
Two of the most common passwords used aer '123456' and 'password'. Even if you didn't select something that obvious, the chances are good that your password is something easily guessed, like your partner, child or pet's name, a birthday or anniversary, or your city, college or favorite sports team.
For those of you who are smuggly thinking that your password is much more creative than that, did you know that there are a number of free password crackers available online and that a 7 character password that contains only lowercase characters can be cracked in an average of only 2.23 hours?
Wow.
Select your password from uppercase, lowercase and special characters - like @#$%^&* - and it will take 2.21 years to crack that 7 character password. Add one more character, and it's going to take 2.1 centuries.
Now think about what is at risk if your email account is hacked. Sending spam to your friends is probably the least of your worries, although some might become upset depending on the content of the messages.
If I can read your email messages, I can probably learn alot about you - where you bank, the credit cards you use, your favorite shopping sites (are your credit card numbers saved?) and maybe even where your investments are. How many of those accounts are linked to your email address? Have you ever forgotten your login credentials and had the reset instructions or your password emailed to you? Whoops.
So if you recognize yourself in anything I have posted, you might want to change your email password before you too are a victim of email hacking.