How to better protect yourself in the Online World After the recent yahoo hack went public, it left many people bewildered whether their account information was safe or compromised.

Many users believe that a quick change of their password would be able to fix that issue. But is that enough? So what should someone do to protect their information? Just to make this clear, this article is not just for yahoo users but for anyone who uses their e-mail or logs into different websites with a username and password on a day to day basis. Before we begin, the story behind the recent Yahoo hack was not actually recent at all.

This hack was an ongoing security breach which was affecting users since 2013 but wasn’t announced by Yahoo until late 2016. This hack occurred as a result of an unidentified third party using Yahoo’s proprietary codes and utilized them to create cookies that allowed authentication and access to users’ accounts. This hack affected over a billion users which happened to be twice as much as the last biggest hack. Names, telephone numbers, dates of birth, passwords and even some security questions were compromised in this hacking.

Knowing this, the first thing that a user should do is change their password at least every six months. When changing a password, try to avoid predictable patterns such as incrementing the last number or adding or deleting a character. For example, “peach1” to “peach2” or “peach***” to “peach**”. Also try to use a mixture between capitalized letters, lowercase letters, numbers, symbols and special characters. So instead of using “squash123,” try using “$qU@Sh!276”. Now I know these may be complicating at first but trust me it will be far more difficult for hackers or onlookers to decrypt your password if you use this mentality.

There are additional ways where you could properly secure your email or login by using a two step verification method, which require maybe a cell phone number or fingerprint along with the password in order to gain access to your account. Second off are security questions. Many people overlook them since they just seem as useless questions that a person may never use. But what some may not know is that if I knew your security questions and answers, I could access your account without even needing your password.

Security questions don’t need to be changed as often as passwords do but they need to be properly kept so that if a hacker were to intrude into your account and change your password then you would be able to retrieve your information. With security questions, try to avoid the obvious which would be “What city were you born in?” or “What secondary school did you go to?” as many of the answers to these questions could be easily found on your mailing address, other emails, or much simply social media networks.

Instead try something that couldn’t be easily found online like “What was your first childhood friend?” Third, avoid entering in your email address on websites you don’t trust, since many of them may be hacked or be baiting websites. Some of these websites are put in place in order to get your information to sell to third party accounts which could result in an increase amount of spam in your inbox or either worse, stolen information. Many of these websites could be identified by a slight variation in the URL, for Example: www.starrcomputerssss.com instead of www.starrcomputers.com so it is always important to double check the website you are on.

Also another way to identify a secure website is to look to the left of the URL and see if there is a lock icon. This means that while on that particular website you will have a secure connection and your information will be private. If you are still unsure with the website you are on but don’t want to leave as yet, enter in false information but it isn’t recommended as the best thing to do is to exit that website completely. There are additional ways that a person could further be secured but these are the most basic and easy methods to do so. Just remember as technology grows throughout the world, this leads to more and more cyber criminals and hacking incidents on the rise. I hope this helped many of you become more aware and more equip to face the internet’s many foes.