Raise Shields

We are all guilty of having either easy simple passwords, that are easy for us to remember. But just as they are easy and simple for you they are also simple and easy for someone else to figure out or crack

Truth be told, anything less than a 15 letter password is not secure to a brute force attack (where someone would try all the combinations from 000000 to FFFFFF) until a match is found. A decent computer can plow through your 15 letter password in 30 minutes. And that number is ever shrinking

These kind of attacks are a little bit more sophisticated than the average John can do. But there is a threat that is actually pretty serious, and happens to be right out there, in your face and is way more simple than that to do

Many sites, forums, blogs provide a registration section, and this is where you really need to be concerned. Since you don't know what kind of a back end they have and how they're storing those passwords from prying eyes.

Some store these in clear text, so admins can actually read them , and here's where it gets really scary. MANY people end up using the same password for their Mail accounts as well, and more seriously bank accounts.

A malicious admin can and often will take advantage of the information he has, including your favorite user-name and your favorite password. Which mean he might end up accessing your email account finding more about you and finding more about your other serious accounts. Banks, insurance, subscriptions .. and many other things you prefer to keep secret

A little advice to everyone to make sure you're secure and safe from the evil doers, make sure you have a unique password for all those forums you subscribed to, that one you may keep easy but unique enough for each service you sign up for.

While a password like As%2(3d,e]T~d\OT#vE=rxR seem to be very secure it's also very hard to remember, while a password like "good" "pretty" "God" is way too easy to figure out.

Also to remember the keep changing your password to keep it ... secret

In this jungle of universe, make sure you're always secure and your shields area always charged and raised