Three Things You Can Do Today to Protect Your Passwords | Free Antivirus

 

World Password Day is the perfect time to make sure you know the basic rules for dealing with passwords.

World Password Day is traditionally celebrated on the first Thursday in May. Passwords are an important part of our online activity. Our online security directly depends on their reliability.

To begin with, let's briefly recall an important rule: use unique and long passwords, include upper and lower case letters, numbers, and (if possible) special characters such as "#", "$", "&". If you need help creating strong passwords, you can always use our random password generator.

Today we are going to talk about three things that will improve the security of your accounts:

Use a password manager if you don't already have one.

Check if your passwords have leaked online. 

Change passwords or delete accounts on services from which passwords were leaked (below we will tell you how to find such sites).

Use a password manager

One of the most important principles for securing your accounts is to create a unique password for each profile. Due to the large number of services we use, it is almost impossible to remember a unique password for each one. 

A password manager can help with this: the program generates long, complex passwords and stores them for each site. It is enough to remember one master password - the one that is needed for authorization in the password manager. Take care of its reliability. 

Protect your email with two-factor authentication (or better, use it on all accounts). The email address to which the password manager will send an email if you need to reset the master password. If this account is not securely secured, an attacker could theoretically take over it to hijack your password manager and gain access to all your other accounts.

Many people save passwords in the browser for convenience. However, this is not safe. They can be stolen from there. For example, with the help of special malicious programs that steal this data unnoticed. If you are used to storing your passwords in your browser, use the Password protection feature in Security. With it, no one will be able to gain unauthorized access to your saved passwords.

Check if your passwords have leaked anywhere

Every year, the data of millions of users is leaked from various popular sites. Logins and passwords are often leaked. As a rule, the login is e-mail.

Unfortunately, there is a high probability that your passwords could also get into the network as a result of one of these leaks. Such data is sold on the darknet and on specialized forums and can be used for various purposes.

Our algorithms monitor the traffic of such databases on the network. If your email address appears there, you will receive a notification from which service and which password was stolen. To track your accounts for leaks, go to the antivirus menu, click on the "Privacy " tab, then "Hacking Alerts" and enter your email address. 

We recommend that you keep track of all your email addresses that are used to log into any service. To do this, click "Track even more addresses" in the same antivirus tab.

Change passwords (or delete accounts) on sites from which passwords have leaked

If you find that any of your passwords have been lost or stolen, it means that they may be in the hands of intruders and sold on the network. Hypothetically, anyone can log in to this account on your behalf - so you need to change the compromised passwords as soon as possible. If you have used the same password on other sites, change it on those sites as well.

If you find that your password has been lost or stolen from a site you no longer use, consider closing that account completely. We recommend that you delete all personal accounts that you no longer use. If a site has lost your password, it's worth asking if you trust the site enough to continue using it. Many people find stolen or leaked passwords for accounts they have forgotten about. 

Situations, when passwords are lost or stolen, are no longer surprising and may become a serious problem shortly. It takes some time to check and change lost passwords - but this is a very important and necessary step to ensure more reliable protection of your personal data. Doing this regularly (or at least on World Password Day) will improve your online security.

Protect your passwords and personal data. You can download a free trial version of the free antivirus at this link.