In this day-in-age security issues are abundent, and Google is no exception from ‘issues’. Though that’s today’s topic, today’s topic is what you the user can do to secure your online life/identity. And it’s not all about just having a good password.
Over at SecurityMusings.com, they have short but good article about some things that many people forget about: A plan! Most people forget about this part of their daily security lives. Recently the writer at Digital Inspiration.com had his gmail account hacked! He is a geek and he still had it hacked! Yikes!
Though, from that experience he learned a lot and shared his enlightenment with us the site at this article.
Point #2 on Security Musings was that “You Don’t Have A Contingency Plan”:
You Don’t Have A Contingency Plan – Security plans by smaller companies, as well intentioned as they may be, could very well be lacking a well thought out contingency plan. Having a tested contingency plan is important so that you know your backups will work, your applications will be accessible, and you can get up and running in a reasonable time.
In light of that, DI.com says this:
#3. Take a paper and write down the following information about your Google Account. You will need this to verify your identify to Google in case someone else takes over your Google Account and the secondary email address associated with your account.
- The month and year when your created your Gmail / Google Account. You can look at the last page of your Gmail Inbox (or go to Sent Items) to get an approximate idea of the date when you created the account.
- If you created a Gmail account by invitation, write the email address of the person who first sent you that invite for Gmail. Use a search query like “in:all has invited you to open a free Gmail account” to find that invitation email.
- The email addresses of your most frequently emailed contacts (the top 5).
- The names of any custom labels that you may have created in your Gmail account.
- The day/month/year when you started using various other Google services (like AdSense, Orkut, Blogger, etc.) that are associated with the Google account that you are trying to recover. If you’re not certain about some of the dates, provide your closest estimate.
You should always know the full information. Why? Because if you get hacked, you will then know what to do, where to do and you will have all the available information to help you prove your point (or in the case of gmail, that you are you).
Other tips from the blog:
- Log-in to your Gmail / Google Account and associate a phone number. You’ll then receive an SMS text message whenever someone tries to recover your Google password.
- You should also consider copying emails from Gmail to another service (like Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail – it is effortless) so when your Gmail account is compromised, you at least have access to all your previous emails. Or you can configure a desktop email client like Outlook or Thunderbird with your Gmail account (via POP3 or IMAP) and thus you’ll have an automatic offline backup of your Gmail Inbox.
I rather like the idea of e-mail backup, though the one problem with that idea is space. Though, what you can do to do this automatically is open up another Gmail account and forward all your mail to that account.
Here are good Top Tips for keeping your Gmail safe:
- Don’t access your mail from public computers
- Use Google’s/Gmails HTTPS feature
- Use a long randomly generated password (you can use a software like Keepass to generate a secure password for you)
- Use separate passwords for different logins.
- To help remember all your passwords use a secure program like Keepass (it’s portable and free!)
Photo by akashgoyal @ Flicker .
Digital Inspiration Article [via Lifehacker.com]
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