A strong password is an important part of cybersecurity and protecting your privacy
Are you using your birthday, name, or your favourite idols as your password? I bet many of you do, despite being told not to during school security talks. After all, forgetting your password is such a pain in the butt.
Imagine this scenario: your social media account is hacked, but you recover your password and change it to a stronger one. Everything seems secure. Phew!
But wait: the hacker could still use the information they found. They may threaten to publish your private information, such as photos or addresses. They could also hijack your online identity and damage your reputation.
Having an easy-to-guess password for your devices also makes them prone to Internet of Things (IoT) attacks.
In other words, hackers can quickly take over all your devices connected to the internet, like headphones, webcams, and smart appliances like washing machines. Then, once these devices are hijacked, they can be used for Distributed Denial of Services (DDoS) attacks. DDoS attacks send a surge of data to web servers, bringing down websites or services.
If your passwords are weak, hackers can doxx you. Hackers might not be interested in doxxing you in particular, but when they can reveal the personal information of hundreds of thousands of people at once, yours might be included as well for others to use as they will.
This happened with Facebook just this year. A hacker published details of more than 533 million users online: full names, phone numbers, addresses, birthdates, and so on.
In this digital era, we have to know all we can about technology and cybersecurity in order to protect ourselves.