I get 2-3 spam emails from “someone that I know” each week. Why the quotes? While the email comes from my friend, my friend didn’t send it. What? Say that again!
Here is what is happening. Some bad guys out on the internet are figuring our your passwords. They love to figure them out for common email providers like gmail, yahoo, hotmail and aol. They find your email someplace and then try to log in using a computer program. They try passwords that are common English words and names.
These emails typically have only a link to some site. Sometimes, the sites are just trying to get more traffic. Other times, the sites are malicious sites with viruses or they are trying to collect your personal information.
Whenever, I get one of these, I inform the sender that their email has been compromised and ask them to change it.
Here are some tips to create a more secure password. Try adding a few random letters, capital letters or better yet numbers or special characters to the end of your favorite password. So, instead of “Kermit”, try “Kermit853#”
Here is another tip, pick two keys on your keyboard. Then use a pattern, like right, right, up, left, down. Here is an example. Look at your keyboard so that this makes sense. I’m picking a and j as my two letters. Anyone can remember that so my password would be asdewjkloi. If that wasn’t clear. I typed the first of my two letters “a”. Then I typed the letter to the right of that “s”. Then I typed the letter to the right of that “d”. Then I continued up and left (e and w). Then I did the same thing for the j (jkloi).
Got it? Now go change your passwords. (Especially your email password, I don’t want any spam from “you”.)
