You would think that someone like Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook and pretty much undisputed king of social media, would be personally tech-savvy enough to avoid getting his various online accounts hacked.聽
You鈥檇 think that, wouldn鈥檛 you? But you鈥檇 be wrong.
It was recently revealed that Zuckerberg鈥檚 Twitter account was hacked. Well, it wasn鈥檛 exactly hacked. Some nefarious person got info from a data leak in 2012 from LinkedIn, the social media career site, and found Zuckerberg鈥檚 password for that site 鈥� which was 鈥渄adada.鈥� I guess he had recently become a father or something, prompting him to choose the extremely weak, but otherwise cute 鈥渄adada鈥� password. The only problem was Zuckerberg decided to use the exact same password for his Twitter account, and 鈥淏AM!鈥� that nefarious someone got control of it.聽
Want some free advice from a tech-loving person? Don鈥檛 do what Mark did. Never reuse your passwords. It鈥檚 just asking for trouble, and for someone to post racist tweets from your account.聽
But it isn鈥檛 just about preventing someone from posting penis pictures all over your hacked Snapchat account. It鈥檚 about making sure people don鈥檛 steal your money or your identity.聽
And for whatever-deity-you-happen-to-worship鈥檚 sake, try to be freakin鈥� original about it.
Want to know what the most popular and commonly used password was for Twitter, based on a mind-blowingly massive theft of Twitter usernames and passwords involving nearly 33 million customers? Ready? The most commonly used password was 鈥�123456.鈥澛�
You can鈥檛 see me right now, but I am actually slapping my palm to my forehead. It fairly staggers the imagination that people who are allowed to drive cars, hold down jobs and can breathe without the aid of a machine would be so colossally lazy, staggeringly stupid or healthy doses of column A and column B.
The next most popular passwords were 鈥�123456789,鈥� 鈥渜werty,鈥� (that鈥檚 the first six letters that appear at the top of your keyboard) and the sublimely simple and decidedly daft 鈥減assword.鈥�
Wow. Why not just invite people to hack your accounts and post your passwords and details online? It would be simpler and more to the point.
Look, we live in a digital age, in case you haven鈥檛 noticed or recently woke up from a coma. We bank, play games, chat, work and share lots of information online. Your passwords absolutely have to be secure if you want to avoid some nasty consequences.
So, to make sure your passwords are secure, use an original password for all your accounts, and use a mixture of alphabet, numerals and symbols. It鈥檚 easier than it seems.
For instance, choose a base password you鈥檒l remember, like Batman. Except, for a password you鈥檇 maybe add your favourite number and change some letters to symbols and capital letters, making it B@tM@n69. Now, using that base and easily memorable password, make it original for each account. For instance for your bank account it could be BankB@tM@n69 or CibcB@tM@n69, while your gaming account could be GameB@tM@n69 or something. I use this system for my accounts, making sure the base password is strong, and that all my accounts have an original based on the main password. If one account gets hacked, someone would have to work a bit to get into another one of my accounts.
It鈥檚 not foolproof by any means, and if you have a better system to use unique and strong passwords for your accounts, by all means use that instead. But if you鈥檙e one of the millions still using 鈥�123456鈥� or 鈥減assword,鈥� you need to wake up, smell the digital coffee and start thinking about your online security. You wouldn鈥檛 want to end up like Mark Zuckerberg, right? Well, except for the billions of dollars and whole king of social media thing鈥� other than that, you wouldn鈥檛 want to be like him.
