Why One Of The Top Identity Theft Protection Steps Is To Use a Password Manager
Do you lock the door when you leave your home? Do you turn off the stove when you are finished cooking your meal? Do you check both sides of the road before crossing it? These are simple life rules that we all follow, or at least try our darndest to follow to keep ourselves safe. Unfortunately, we are not always careful when it counts. Here’s one thing to think about: When was the last time you thought about virtual security and virtual identity theft? With major data breaches becoming as common as the sunrise, more and more people are beginning to understand the issues that are associated with poor and inadequate security tools, as well as general lack of information and common sense.
Raise your hand if you are still one of those people who are recycling the same old password that was created 10 years ago or that are using weak and easy-to-hack passwords? Hopefully, you are not one of them, but even if you are, there’s always time to change your habits and make things safer for yourself. In this article, you will learn why using a password manager is one of the most important things you could do for your own virtual protection.
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How poor password management leads to identity theft
One of the most common issues that anyone who has more than 10 passwords runs into is keeping them strong and unique. As mentioned previously, people often reuse the same passwords over and over again, but that is terrible practice because if one account gets hacked, the rest of them become easy targets too. On the other hand, it is hard to create unique and strong passwords for every account because remembering such passwords can be almost impossible, and writing them down on a piece of paper is not advisable. How many passwords do you use? You might think that you don’t have that many, but if you start counting, you might realize that you have 30, 40, maybe even more. You need to remember your phone pin codes, login information for your online banking, social media, email, and many other accounts.
If you manage your accounts by recycling the same password, you are at risk of having your accounts hacked in the event of a massive data breach. For example, if passwords and usernames are leaked by your email provider, hackers can immediately attempt to hijack your accounts and then try the same login data to take over other accounts. Of course, in a situation like this, even the best identity theft protection tools would not be able to help. What you can do, however, is become more selective about the accounts you set up. If the service provider you are interested in does not have a good reputation or if they have been linked to data leaks in the past, you need to think carefully if you should get involved.
Recycled passwords could lead to unwanted data breaches and identity theft if schemers successfully apply social engineering tricks and phishing attacks as well. Beware of any suspicious spam emails, messages received via social networking sites, and scam websites that might be used to extract sensitive information from you using misleading information. Note that tech-support scams could be used in the same way as well. Ultimately, if you become a victim of schemers, you want to minimize the outcome as much as possible, and it is most important that you start managing your passwords correctly. There is no doubt that the best protection against identity theft is to use a reliable password manager.
Why a reliable password manager is the best identity theft protection tool?
A good, strong password manager can help you in several ways. For example, the Cyclonis Password Manager has an integrated Password Generator. This tool allows creating extremely strong passwords that are at least 14 characters long (14 characters is the recommended length, but users can go up to 32 characters), and are composed of symbols, letters, and/or numbers. If you use this tool, every single password for every single account you own will be unique and impossible to guess, and in the event of one leaked password, you will not need to suffer a major data breach that could occur due to password recycling.
Well, what if your computer is taken over by malware? Does that put ALL of your passwords at risk? Those using Cyclonis can choose to store their passwords on their computers or using Dropbox, Google Drive, Apple iCloud, or Microsoft OneDrive cloud storage. In either case, the passwords are encrypted using strong encryption keys, and that means that they cannot be stolen. On top of that, the services are free, which is why Cyclonis Password Manager offers the best protection against identity theft. If you use this tool, you will need to remember only the Master Password, which grants permission to the Manager itself.
In conclusion
Taking care of virtual security should become second nature to us all because identity theft is a real issue, and it affects users every single day. In some cases – for example, when companies who are meant to store private data safe end up leaking it – there is not much a regular user can do, but schemers and hackers use many other security loopholes to attack accounts that are “protected” using weak passwords. Many users choose to recycle passwords or use those that are easy to remember because of the sheer volume of virtual accounts in use. While creating and remembering strong passwords can be impossible if you rely on your own memory, a reliable password manager can help tremendously.
Using Password Generator, you can create strong, unique passwords with a click of a button. All passwords stored by Cyclonis are encrypted, and cannot be accessed by anyone else but you. Because of this, you do not need to worry about identity theft at all. The added bonus is that logging into any account becomes incredibly easy because all login data is automatically inserted into the right boxes to enable automatic access. Overall, there is no doubt that the right password manager can help you avoid identity theft, and that is why installing and using it is highly recommended.
