• 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!

Let’s look at one of the major gaps we create in our own security: passwords. We may think, after years of education from our IT departments, that our passwords are better than ever, but this is not so. One of the main reasons is that hackers have access to faster hardware and better techniques than they have ever had. As mentioned in a recent Ars Technica article,, cheaper graphics processors allow password-cracking programs to try BILLIONS of password combinations in a SECOND . What used to take years to do now takes months, weeks, or even days.

Hackers are also better informed about our habits (i.e.: our password-creating habits) than they used to be. Recent leaks of consumer information from major companies have given hackers huge datasets to mine, which have allowed them to figure out the patterns we tend to use when we create a password. They’ve added these patterns to the programs they use to crack passwords and now their systems are smarter than ever.

An article on Lifehacker goes into the details (how hackers do what they do so successfully, what sort of patterns we have that make it so easy for them to crack our passwords, etc.) but let’s take a quick look at their recommendations for creating stronger passwords: the key is to make them unique and completely unpredictable.

1. Avoid predictable password formulas (e.g.: most of us use a name, place or common word as the “seed” of the password, capitalize the first letter, add a number or common symbol at the end).
2. Use truly random passwords (use multiple unrelated words strung together or, better yet, a password generator and manager)
3. Use a unique password for each site you access (probably the most important part of all, because if you use the same password across multiple sites or services, just cracking that one password will open up several sites to hackers).

There you have it: some easy-to-use but excellent advice on keeping your passwords secure and, thus, keeping yourself safe online. As always, please tell us what you think in the comments below!

“At the heart of Apple’s security architecture is the Advanced Encryption Standard algorithm (AES), a data-scrambling system published in 1998 and adopted as a U.S. government standard in 2001. After more than a decade of exhaustive analysis, AES is widely regarded as unbreakable. The algorithm is so strong that no computer imaginable for the foreseeable future—even a quantum computer—would be able to crack a truly random 256-bit AES key. TheNational Security Agency has approved AES-256 for storing top-secret data.”

Some argue that these encryption technologies give criminals a leg up against law enforcement, but others believe that personal privacy is an important right – one that is increasingly valuable as we grow increasingly connected digitally. What do you think? Tell us in the comments!

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.

There a plenty of sites out there that pull from social media and assorted (public) databases to gather information about you – and whether the information is incorrect, out-of-date, or more correct than you’d like, Safe Shepherd will actually do all the work of getting your information removed from these sites – the service will make phone calls, send letters, and follow up and make sure the information is taken off of the site. Unlike their competitors they don’t just use SEO tricks to get your information pushed farther down a search results page: they actually contact the site owners and make sure the information is removed.

The company offers a free version of their service, which includes the initial search for your information, alerts you to the results of the search and the removal of the most basic records at no charge  definitely a great introduction to their service. If you want to get more done (like remove more difficult records, or to activate continuous privacy monitoring) you can sign up for their premium plan.

Considering how little individual privacy is valued these days, this is an especially valuable service – doubly so since they do the most tedious and time-consuming work for you.

Forbes, Mashable and Business Insider can’t all be wrong. If you’re interested in controlling your online image (and you should be) Safe Shepherd is worth a look!