Mike's NBC-TV stories

Simple Tips to Protect Yourself Against Hackers

The massive theft of over a BILLION email accounts by a Russian hacker gang – among a ever-expanding list of other hacking events making headlines – has Internet security experts scrambling and ordinary online users wondering what they can do to protect themselves. I have these suggestions.

The very first thing Internet users need to do is change their passwords. Use a program called Last Pass to manage all your passwords. It keeps track of your user names and passwords for you and logins in automatically with them. This is how passwords should be…very complex. The program will generate secure passwords like this.

Password Genie is another secure password manager. It stores and secures passwords on PC and Mac computers and Apple and Android smartphones and tablets.

I also like Dashlane. It has a form filler, generates secure passwords and has a very easy to use interface. Like the others, there are free and premium versions.

Whichever program you use, be sure to change your social media passwords, too and don’t use the same password on all the sites you visit.

 

Mike is a veteran journalist whose video "PC Mike" reports have been distributed weekly to all 215 NBC-TV stations since 1994, making him one of the most experienced tech reporters in the country. His tech stories and videos have appeared on MSNBC, CNBC, the Today Show, The New York Times, USA Today and in numerous national newspapers and magazines. In addition to the PC Mike tech blog, he also publishes the Roadtreking.com RV Travel Blog in which he travels North America in an RV reporting about interesting people and places.