By now, you’ve heard endless warnings about the risk of short, trivial passwords. There’s a good chance you ignore them. Barton Gellman Read Quote
Even complex passwords are getting easy to break if they’re too short. That’s because today’s inexpensive computer chips have the power of supercomputers from the year 2000. Barton Gellman Read Quote
If you do write down your passwords, don’t make it obvious which password corresponds to which account. Even better, write the passwords incorrectly and make up an easy rule for fixing them. You could decide to add 1 to each number in your password, so that 2x6Y is written as 3x7Y. Barton Gellman Read Quote
Suppose a bad guy guesses the password for your throwaway Yahoo address. Now he goes to major banking and commerce sites and looks for an account registered to that email address. When he finds one, he clicks the ‘forgot my password’ button and a new one is sent – to your compromised email account. Now he’s in a position to do you serious harm. Barton Gellman Read Quote
The best way to preserve your privacy is to use a search engine that does not keep your logs in the first place. That’s the approach used by Startpage and its European parent company, Ixquick. Barton Gellman Read Quote
Everyone and his Big Brother wants to log your browsing habits, the better to build a profile of who you are and how you live your life – online and off. Search engine companies offer a benefit in return: more relevant search results. The more they know about you, the better they can tailor information to your needs. Barton Gellman Read Quote
You don’t need to be a spook to care about encryption. If you travel with your computer or keep it in a place where other people can put their hands on it, you’re vulnerable. Barton Gellman Read Quote
For personal use, I recommend the free and open-source Truecrypt, which comes in flavors for Windows, Mac and Linux. Barton Gellman Read Quote
