• Audit services like iCloud: online services like iCloud are not as secure as you think. Though Mr. Honan goes into more detail in this article on Wired, we can sum up his recommendations with:
• Create a separate Apple ID for your iCloud account
• Turn OFF remote wipe for your computers
• Don’t attach your home address to anything public like your domain name
• Don’t connect services like iCloud to your secure accounts (like Outlook or Gmail) as they provide an easy loophole for hackers to access
• Use different strong passwords for each of your accounts
• Don’t use alternative versions of the same password
• Use multi-phrase passwords
• Audit and update your passwords regularly
• Use a tool like KeePass (our preferred tool) to keep track of all your passwords
• Use 2-Factor Authentication
• Some services (like Google and Facebook) will not only require a password to access but can also send a special, one-time code to your phone that must also be used to access the account. If any of your online services offer this, use it.
• Beef up your password recovery
• Set up a non-primary email address to send password recovery messages to
• Make your security questions difficult to answer: add extra words, shift your hand on the keyboard when typing in the answer, pick out key words in the question
• Back Up, Back Up, Back Up!

It will take some time, but implementing these steps will help you keep your information and identity much more secure. Do you use any of these methods? All of them? Let us know in the comments below!

Taken from an older file from the Yahoo! Contributer Network (previously known as Associated Content), online security firm Sucuri notes that not all of the hacked email addresses belong to Yahoo! email accounts:

“…135,599 emails came from yahoo.com; but that a further 106,185 came from gmail.com; 54,393 from hotmail.com; 24,677 from aol.com; 8,422 from comcast.net and 6,282 msn.com.”

While Yahoo! claims that only 5% of the stolen user IDs and passwords are still valid, that is still a lot of private information.

It may be unlikely that your email address was one of those compromised, but just in case, it may be a good idea to go and change your password – in fact, this entire incident serves as an excellent reminder: change your password regularly. It may be a bit of a pain, but not nearly as much of a pain as getting hacked!

You can find the full story here.

No Email Day (‘celebrated’ on November 11th), for instance, is a campaign whose aim is to get people to stop using email for just 24 hours to experience greater productivity and see just how much email is now abused/overused. There are more and more studies showing that people can become addicted to email (on both an individual and organizational level), and even without the shadow of addiction, email tends to overload workers and distract them from their actual jobs. No Email Day gives people a chance to take a bit of a break from their inboxes and, perhaps, examine their options.

From auto-responders to posting communications guidelines on your website, there are a number of ways to reduce the hold that email has over us. Have you found any methods that work well for you? If so, tell us in the comments!