On my previous post i mentioned about email passwords that have been released online.  If incase you have a hotmail, live.com, or if you think that you might have compromised your accounts security by logging in to insecure sites or you just want to secure your online accounts, i would suggest you change your password now to a more secure one.

I would suggest that you check the strength of your password using Microsoft’s word checker here.

A strong password should contains both letters and numbers as well as special characters and should be at least 8 characters long.  It should also have a mix of upper and lower case letters.  Also try to prevent using common words found on dictionaries because they can easily be cracked by brute-force password attacks.  One good way to make a password is something that you can easily remember but hard for others to guess.

Here’ what Microsoft suggests:

• Think of a sentence that you will remember
  Example: “My son Aiden is three years old.”
• Turn your sentence into a password
  Use the first letter of each word of your memorable sentence to create a string, in this case: “msaityo”.
• Add complexity to your password or pass phrase
  Mix uppercase and lowercase letters and numbers. Introduce intentional misspellings.
  For example, in the sentence above, you might substitute the number 3 for the word “three”, so a password might be “MsAi3yo”.
• Substitute some special characters
  Use symbols that look like letters, combine words, or replace letters with numbers to make the password complex.
  Using these strategies, you might end up with the password “M$8ni3y0.”

Here are some password strategies that you also need to avoid:

Avoid sequences or repeated characters
“12345678,” “222222,” “abcdefg,” or adjacent letters on your keyboard do not make secure passwords.

Avoid using only look-alike substitutions of numbers or symbols
Criminals will not be fooled by common look-alike replacements, such as to replace an ‘i’ with a ‘1′ or an ‘a’ with ‘@’ as in “M1cr0$0ft” or “P@ssw0rd”.

These substitutions can be effective when combined with other measures, such as length, misspellings, or variations in case.

Avoid your login name
Don’t use any part of your name, birthday, social security number, or similar information for your loved ones.

This type of information is one of the first things criminals will try, and they can find it easily online from social networking sites, online resumes, and other public sources of data.

Avoid dictionary words in any language
Criminals use sophisticated tools that can rapidly guess passwords that are based on words in multiple dictionaries, including words spelled backwards, common misspellings, profanity, and substitutions.

Avoid using only one password for all your accounts
If your password is compromised on any one of the computers or online systems that use it, you should consider all of your other information protected by that password compromised as well.

It is critical to use different passwords for different systems.

Be careful with password recovery questions
Many Web sites offer a “password ” service that lets you provide the answer to a secret question. If you forget your password, the service will send it to you if you can remember the answer to your secret question.

The questions are often random, but sometimes the answers to these questions are freely available on the Web. Choose your questions carefully or make up the answers.

Avoid using online storage
If criminals find your passwords stored online or on a networked computer, they have access to all your information.

Tons of hotmail, msn, and live.com passwords have been recently exposed online, about 10,000 of them.  Researchers who were able to study the leaked passwords found out that many are still using very weak passwords.  These accounts were said to have been genereted via phishing scams targeted mostly to Latino’s because majority of the passwords had spanish names.

Based on the study, 42% of the password used were all lower case, only about 6% were using passwords that mixes alphanumeric and other characters.  As said, there were a lot of spanish names used as passwords like alejandra and alberto, suggesting that the phishing attacks were propably targeted to Latino communities.

The passwords were posted over to a clipboard site Pastebin.com.  The list has already been removed by the site owner but Bogdan Calin of Acunetix was able to grab a copy.

Based on his findings, the most common passwords used were “123456″ and “123456789″.  The longest password used was 30 characters long “lafaroleratropezoooooooooooooo”.  Average passwords were 6-9 characters long, 8 being the most.

Accoording to the data gathered, a big majority of users are still using very weak passwords.  If you are still one of those using weak passwords for your email, then you might want to consider changing your password now!  A more secured password would contain both letters and numbers, with a mix of capital and lower case letters, it’s also an added security if you use special characters.

We have an entry to add on our list of free antivirus software.  I have just created a new Downloads page so that it would be easier to find software that I recommend you to download.  New on our free anti-virus software list is the Microsft Security Essentials.  Yes, its from Microsoft and its free.   It’s basically a revamped Microsoft Live One-Care but has been made very light on resources and based on some reviews, it’s actually quite effective and unobtrosive. 
 
Although Live OneCare has not gained that much popularity and trust from pc users, with MSE Microsoft has taken all the not so useful from OneCare and left all the essentials and a very simple UI which users might really appreciate.  It has virus, malware and spyware protection. The UI has been made really simple to navigate and understand. The UI is separated by multiple tabs,  a green monitor icon tells you that everything is OK with your system, or a red one which obviously tells you something’s wrong, or yellow if your potentially unprotected.  The buttons you need to press to fix issues are hard to miss, so this is very suitable to ordinay home users. 
 
If your looking for a free virus protection software then give Microsoft Security Eseentials  a spin or you can check out my first list of free anti virus software for more options.  Keep on checking our new downloads page for new free stuff which I will sure to update.

Download Microsoft Security Essentials here.

Note:  If you are using a non certified copy of Windows, MSE will know and wont allow you to download the software if you dont pass the verification process.