The proud profession of a hacker who used to work for the government or people that are considered to be righteous fighting against unethical organizations or governments has now become a daily mischievous activity that irritates and frights many individuals and organizations. They are now considered to be criminals and terrorist who hijacks online properties.

Despite the hackers who live among us, we continue to use the Internet to communicate, study, work, play and socialize. With that, we have so many chores of account to manage that some of us use just one password for all accounts for the sake of convenience. This is dangerous as it puts all accounts in jeopardy  making the hacker’s job easier.

“Treat your password like your toothbrush. Don’t let anybody else use it, and get a new one every six months.” – Clifford Stoll

Viruses are developing equally as fast as the Internet security because hackers are as hard working as the security developers probing for new accounts everyday. Admin who manages massive email accounts are able to witness the constant stream of unauthorized access everyday and new viruses can be detected periodically through anti-virus software.

Unless the Internet comes up with a state of the art technology that requires physical matches such as thumbprint and eye scanning (like those in sci-fi movies) the strength of the password would now would determine how much it could withstand the breach attempts by hackers. Following are some tips on how to create a good password:-

1. Use at least 6 characters or above. The logic is simple the longer it is the more guessing it takes.

2. Avoid picking words from dictionary. Determined hackers would go through dictionary hacking tools of different languages that can also be known as brute force attack.

3. Use combination of alphabets and numbers. The more complicated it seems the better it is.

4. For password with sensitive caps, try using variation of caps.

5. Avoid using same characters for username and password.

6. Try to look for sites that have SSL feature. This feature enhances security and protects information with encryption technology.

7. Use different passwords for all your online accounts.

8. Make it a habit to change password every 6 months.

Through constant change of password and safe practice, the risks are reduced tremendously. Aside from making sure all guidelines for better security is taken care from your side, your provider must also be doing its role to ensure security measures and technology updates from time to time. In Webserver, smartermail users would receive notification when 100 emails have been sent out to prevent emails from being falsified and misused by hackers. Suspicious emails would also be quarantined automatically to prevent recipients from receiving it, until the users have declared it as a safe email.

Technology and the open source of commercial world are leading many opportunities for the development of the internet (and hackers). Although none of the above guide is 100% guaranteed, it is enough to prolong the hacker’s efforts to months and even years.