By now, we all know basic rules for password security. Most websites will enforce a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters and special characters to ensure that passwords are less vulnerable to dictionary attacks. However, there is another threat that people are less aware of.
Currently just about everyone who is active online has several accounts with different online services, usually these log-ins are also associated with your name and an e-mail address. These log-ins range from vital services such as your bank password and main e-mail account to your identities on various blogs, forums or small interest sites. The growing security threat is that many people use the same or very similar passwords for their e-mail accounts as they do for a log in to another service.
If a smaller service is compromised, identity thieves can gather individuals passwords, real names, and e-mail addresses, sometimes with enough information to break into e-mail accounts and more vital services. You can’t count on the security of every website you encounter, nor can you be sure that the website itself isn’t being run by someone unscrupulously seeking personal information, however you can protect yourself through a variety of methods.
First, it’s a good idea to set up one or more disposable e-mail accounts using a web based service and use that when registering for forums, discussion sites, downloading services and the like, and make sure you do not associate this e-mail address with any site that requires personal or financial information, such as your bank, or Facebook or any site that has your credit card info. That way if your identity is compromised through a leak on one of the smaller sites, the thief only gets access to spam and chatter, not your personal details.
Second, if maintaining separate passwords for each site is too much work, you should at least be sure to keep unique passwords for any service that has your credit card or banking information, as well as any e-mail account associated with those services. Taking these two simple steps can save you a lot of trouble later.