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The Problem with Passwords

There are thousands of posts on how to create a good password. There are even more on instances of hacking and the consequences there of. And if it all seems too hard to remember complex passwords ask yourself this question; do you like your life?
Here’s another question to ponder; why do hackers hack?
The dudes who hack government databases, websites and secured servers, as well as media and big bad corporation sites want info to use in a variety of ways from citizen activision in the case of governments to corporate espionage in the case of corporations.
So what do they want with your details? Imagine if you will you arriving in a foreign airport at passport control or immigration. Except it’s not you it’s someone else. Someone who purchased a complete real identity and simply changed the picture on a passport. In some countries this is easily aided with a bribe; near Asian and form eastern bloc countries for sure. They probably wont impact you until next time to use your passport. Alarm bells will ring. You will be questioned and the ‘evil doers’ ( thank you President Bush) will be long gone. Far fetched. Not nearly far fetched enough.
Many countries have banking laws far less restrictive than ours. It’s those restrictions that helped Australia bypass the GFC a few years back by the by, but thats another story. The online credit card processing procedure requires very little real world info and hardly any verification. Run this nightmare in your head; a hacker gets your deets then applies for a credit card. Thing this, they don’t stop applying on a variety of sites until the stolen persona fails. By that time, you have incurred the debt of a small African nation. Maybe even a large one. Can’t happen to you. So thought Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson who was so sure his UK bank account could not be hacked he printed in his newspaper column his bank account number. A significant amount was transferred on his personal, private and oh so safe bank account to a charity. A virtual, fuck you, Clarkson. The bank repaid the stolen funds in a PR move to remind customers that giving our your account number is probably the single dumbest thing a human can do.
McAffee, the security experts, believe the most common password that people use is ‘password’. This only applies to systems that don’t use forced criteria password creation. As a password, ‘password’ is probably the first password a non-hacker would attempt, especially with wireless networks.

Human memory is the greatest advantage hackers have to accessing your details or data. Human nature dictates that we want ease and avoid difficulty. Therefore we use the same password across many websites, usually with a pet’s name and their birth year. Hackers say thank you. Not because they guess them, because people rarely give their pets long names or even add the two numeral century indicator prior to their birth year. Hackers love short. Cracking short codes is fast.

When we think hackers we think of well organized criminal geeks wanting to get to our money, or credit. But often they are after pieces of information from multiple web sites where we have handed over personal details. Their real aim is identity theft. The value of a complete ID is worth far more than the money you have in your bank account or the credit available on your credit cards. With an authentic identity including valid history, credit can be secured for a range of services from cell phones to Internet access. Another popular target for hackers is email accounts, especially the free online services like Hotmail and Gmail. Hackers sell cracked email addresses to spammers so they can ply their trade. Personally, I’m still a,a

Security levels vary from financial and banking websites to