I’m hooking together two totally different things in my post today, but felt that they were connected because both topics bore me to death. :)
Password Protection
I was watching the news Monday night and one of the big stories is, of course, the Assange case. Specifically, the hackers that are bringing down websites that have cut off support to Assange or WikiLeaks.
What alarmed me most was this story (featured in the LA Times) that explains how hackers broke into the Gawker blog (a cluster of big-name blogs, if you don’t visit there) and, among other things, displayed a text file of 200,000 emails and passwords. Many of the users had used the same passwords over and over again on different websites—so hackers also took over their Twitter accounts, etc.
I think we all know that we shouldn’t reuse passwords. We shouldn’t have the same password for our Facebook account that we use for our online banking and for our blog. This article from ZDNet explains the reasons why we shouldn’t.
ZDNet said that the main reason people reuse passwords is for convenience—they simply can’t remember a variety of user names and passwords. The post advised using a password manager and not even trying to commit these passwords to memory. The post author mentioned free app Password Safe and Splash ID (which is available via subscription but is nice because it’s also accessible from smart phones.)
While we’re doing boring things to protect ourselves, we should also make sure we’re:
Backing Up Our Data
Our computers work well—until, of course, they don’t. I know I’ve lost text before, and I think it’s practically inevitable if you write over a long period of time…unless you’re super-vigilant, like we all should be.
I save my manuscripts to our computer server and also take the easy route and email myself the drafts.
But there are lots of different choices and some of them only really require thought in the setting-up phase of the backup, and less in the implementing of it.
This article ,on the Query Tracker blog, has a nice overview of the different ways to save our data: from flash drives and external hard drives, to sync software, online hard drives (like the popular Dropbox, which is discussed in this post on the Slushbuster blog), and online document managers.
While we’re at it, we should be backing up our blogs. I’ve heard some real horror stories from bloggers I know about losing all the content on their blog. Considering the problems I’ve had with Blogger, I’ve been trying to be good about backing up the blog.
Here is an article on the Guide to Literary Agents blog that discusses how to backup a Blogger, WordPress, and LiveJournal blog.
Have you ever been hacked or lost data? How vigilant are you? I know I’m trying to do better. :)
I live in the IT world and let me tell you there is always something, even in a school district.
I can’t even tell you how cranky I get about passwords and backing up. The excuses I’ve been told for not backing up after they’ve crashed…well that might be my bestseller.
Elizabeth – I couldn’t agree with you more about the need for backups and password vigilance. I’ve been hacked in my Twitter account and once, even scarier, someone hacked my bank account – and I’m pretty careful. It can happen to anyone so please, folks: Be careful about passwords and back up your work.
I’m going to back up my blog as soon as I finish commenting this morning. Thanks for the reminder. I’m “fair” about changing passwords. I could be much better.
Never been hacked or lost data and I started backing up my blog two months ago after hearing about someone else losing everything. Scary stuff!
I used to work for a company that required complex passwords, and that they be changed every 6 weeks. The downside of that policy is that there’s no way to remember the ‘acceptable’ passwords, so you end up having to write them down, which means someone can find them.
Terry
Terry’s Place
Romance with a Twist–of Mystery
Thanks for this reminder. I have been guilty of reusing passwords, although the ones for banking and Pay Pal are quite different from anything else I use. But I do need to transfer all my passwords to KeePass, a password saving site that my son set up for me. Don’t tell him that I have not finished putting all my passwords over there.
How are you backing up your blog? Just curious…
A few years back when I freelanced as a real estate marketer and made customs CDs, my hard drive crashed right near the end of a big project – which was not backed up. I had to swallow the cost of redoing the whole thing and apologize to the client for the delay.
Now my laptop is continuously connected to an external hard drive, and backups go on several times a day. Important files (my writing!) are also backed up automatically to the cloud. I barely notice these processes happening.
I”m very careful with passwords – so careful, in fact, that I’m not saying what I do, except that it does involve SplashID which is a nice product.
Great post, and very important for all of us who spend too much time on our computers.
I’ve never been hacked or had my identity stolen … but thanks for this post and sound admonition! I am guilty of being ‘lazy’ with regard to passwords… want to keep it the same so it’s simple to remember.
I’m changing a bunch of them right now!
You make an excellent point about not re-using passwords. I’m off to change mine. And it’s a great time of year to back up the blog! Thank you for that reminder too!
I’ve never lost data, and I’ve never been hacked–as for backing up what I have, I’ve burned the writing documents that are really important to me on a DVD-RW. They’re safe. :)
Thank you for the post!
Alex–It makes me a little sick to think of losing this blog and rebuilding it! I’m being careful about the backups.
Teresa–Ohhh I can just imagine! You could have written this post better than I could. :)
Margot–It sure can–we’re all possible targets. The scary thing about the Gawker incident is that it involved blog commenters!
Jane–And that’s so unfair! You were trying to be careful…sometimes I think computers just KNOW how to hurt us the worst.
The cloud stuff is really, really cool. I’m just starting to mess around with that technology.
Oh, I spend way too much time on the computer. And I need to do a better job at covering my tracks.
The Old Silly–I know you’re good about backing up your blog, though–you’re one of the people I know who got their blog blown away!
Carol–Probably most of us could do better!
Terry–It’s such a pain, isn’t it? It seems like the hackers are just getting better and better, too.
Heather–You have a Blogger blog, too, so it’s a good idea to keep it backed up. Blogger bombs on me about once a month.
Maryann–You’ll get fussed at, I’m sure, so I’ll keep your secret. :)
The Golden Eagle–That sounds like a great solution!
I’m terrible about both of these things. I DO back up every time I finish another round-via emailing and thumb drive–and the thumb drive usually gets a couple midpoint saves. I guess I have the hardcopy to remake changes if it came to it, so it would be time lost, not content… still, time is money.
Am I paranoid? The programs to manage passwords seem to me like a ripe target for hacking and then someone has ALL of it… I guess I would need to know more…
I have more passwords than any one human should possess…
I love dropbox that is my favorite app and I also love 1password as well I like it as you can generate passwords above 12 characters and it saves it all for you. I don’t have to worry about remember any passwords and if they can crack a 25 character password they can have it :)
I’ve never been hacked personally (as far as I know), but the company I work for get hacker attacks many times every day (like all big companies). The only 100% safe option is dynamic passwords, the kind of passwords that change every time you log in
Cold As Heaven
Hart–Yeah, that would be a major pain to retype, but at least you’d have it!
No, you’re not paranoid–you just have a vivid imagination, like writers are supposed to have! Sounds like a good IT thriller to me. :)
Elspeth–Blogger has a backup feature (settings/export blog then follow the prompts) and it saves the file (with this really weird extension, as far as I can remember) onto my computer. Then you can re-upload it, if needed.
Diane–Me too. And my memory is so bad that half the time I use the wrong one and end up getting locked out.
Babs–I need to use DropBox–I’ve heard so many good things about it!
Cold As Heaven–Oh, those keyfob badges that change the password every few minutes–for the users who work remotely? Very smart for the big corporations.
My email got hacked. But other than that I’ve been able to recover anything I’ve lost. I use thumb drives, external hard drives and disks.
After I lost all my data twice, I have started backing up my hard disk, but I do not do it as often as I should.
I do export my blog periodically, but I am not sure if I transfer it to the hard disk. So if blogger and my computer both crash, I may just end up losing everything. Scary thought.
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Mary–Sounds like you’ve got a real arsenal!
Rayna–The whole backing-up thing is like doing any really tedious home-maintenance-type thing…necessary, but boring!
I haven’t been hacked…yet…but I know plenty of folks who have. Lots of them didn’t know they should change their passwords regularly, and also thought it was okay to have the same password for Facebook and the e-mail associated with Facebook.
I think that’s where most of us are really vulnerable (Facebook), so that’s one I try to change at least monthly (and sometimes again if a friend gets hacked through that site).
I really need to do a lot more with my passwords and backups. I wonder if there is something like the authenticator that Blizzard came up with to help gamers protects their game accounts. It’s a little keyfob thing that you register to the account. After you log in with your username and password (and they are correct), a box pops up asking for the authentication code. On the fob, you push a button and it gives you a number to type in that lasts about 30 seconds. Just an extra step, but it really helps cut down on the hackers.
Sometimes I wonder why anyone would hack a game account except to make people furious, but it’s all about the shared passwords I guess. If you’ve got someone’s game name and password, they might reuse it somewhere with real world value.