Keeping Your Digital Life Safe and Secure

Internet scammers and hackers are becoming more sophisticated every day. But there are some simple things that you can do to protect yourself. None of these items are extreme, but they will help you keep your information safe. I'll point out that I am by no means a security expert, but after spending too many years in the IT field, I do have some insight. I probably also need to say that none of this will guarantee that that you will be perfectly safe, it is only meant to help to prevent problems.

The first thing you can do to protect your digital life is to keep multiple secure passwords. What do I mean by secure password? A secure password will be one that includes letters and numbers and special characters. Choose a password that you will remember, but don't choose one that would be easy for someone to guess. So no spouse names, children names, birthdays, etc. And your password should not include your email address in any way.

Don't reuse the same password for email and the web sites that you use. This is especially true for your email password and any banking or banking related sites. This, in my opinion, is becoming increasingly important. If someone is able to access your email account, and you use the same password for your online banking web site, then they can fairly easily bypass the extra security measures that your bank may provide. They can also delete any messages that may tip you off to a problem.

I would argue that your email password may be the most important password you have. Why? Because if someone is able to access your email, then they could easily to to many of the other sites you use, click the "forgot password" link, and reset the password, and they are in.

So what can you do? Start by changing your email password to something more secure. Change this password every few months, just to be safe. Make sure you do not reuse your email password on other sites that you visit.

Many sites now have login pages that are secure. Some sites do it automatically, some provide it as an option. When a site has a secure login page, it means that all of the information sent to and from the server is encrypted, making it much more difficult for someone to watch the information going to and from the web server. Starting this week, Sugarcats will do it automatically. It's probably not necessary, but I want to make sure that this site does not contribute to any problems. I'll also be implementing some more security features in the near future to help keep your information more secure. And please never hesitate to ask me questions, either below or in the forums.