Animal And Company: Re: [boxer lovers] Judy Leake

I'm going to surmise by the format of this email that Judy Leake has had
her Yahoo email hacked. Yahoo, GMail -- take your pick -- the hackers
are out there, looking for your email account and working to break your
password. If you use a "server based" (i.e., your email is accessed up
on the net and you keep your address/contact list there) you are setting
up all your contacts for spam attacks with links that are attempting to
implant some form of malware.

PLEASE -- if you use any of those "online email accounts" change your
password frequently. Yes, it is a complete pain, but I had one friend
who actually had her email account taken over by a scammer. They changed
her "reply to" so anyone who WROTE her to tell her she'd been hacked,
verified to the scammers theirs was an active account (yeah -- I was one
of those). They always changed her settings AND HR PASSWORD to transfer
ALL her email to them -- online billing, info from her REAL bank, etc.
Then they wiped out her contact list. Completely. It took her nearly 3
days with the help of her IP to get control of her email account again.
I think she's STILL trying to recapture her contacts.

Passwords CANNOT be proper names, words from the dictionary (and getting
clever and using "foreign" words won't help -- the scammers have
multi-language dictionaries, too). A random password is no good if it's
too short. (Or if you can't remember it). Use a combination of upper and
lower case --

Pick something YOU will remember and then use variations of that. Kim
Komando suggests picking a phrase and the using the first letter of each
word or some version of that you'll remember. Look at that generated
word? Dictionary entry? Name? Try again. Add in some numbers and special
characters (*&^%$). DO NOT use the same password for all your accounts.
They find something else of yours, they'll plug in the password they
found and use it.

I use two names and intersperse it. You can use your kids, your parents,
you and your spouse. For example. My sister's name is KAREN. So, I can
take my name and her name and intersperse like this

KlAiRsEaN

Then tuck in some special characters and numbers -- her birthdate is the
16th and mine is the 21st so

16KlAiRsEaN21

Now -- throw in one or two special characters

16KlAiR&#sEaN21

Now THAT's a password I can rebuild in a few seconds and a scammer will
have a heck of a time figuring out.

You can keep an EXCEL spreadsheet with passwords ENCRYPT IT so it can't
be easily accessed. And, there are multiple camps on leaving PCs on or
shut down. I shut down. One because I tend to use my laptop and the
other is ... even though I have VERY strong security software,
firewalls, antimalware, etc., give them enough time and a hacker can
break in. They can do this when they go traipsing around looking for
"on" systems -- and trust me, that's exactly what they do. I used to
have software that not only protected by I could turn on an alert to
tell me when someone was attempting to "walk back" into my computer ...
multiple times daily! However, my anti-malware software and firewall
kept them contained ... and my shutting down meant they didn't have
leisure time to work on my system.

LisaW

Judy Leake wrote:
>
> How are you?
>
> Judy Leake
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>