This New York Post story about the kid who cracked Sarah Palin’s email account has a graphic with tips to prevent your email account from being hacked. It describes steps that are in and of themselves reasonable. But not one of them addresses the weakness the cracker used to get into Sarah’s email. She could, maybe she did, follow every one of the five suggestions and it would not have helped. Why? Because the attack was against the identity verification questions Yahoo! uses. Her password was never cracked. Her account was.
How could the people reading the story and laying out the page not see this?
If you are wondering what to do start with the advice in And Privacy for Who? then use solid passwords, different for work, finance and personal use. Yes, your bank account should have a different password than your Yahoo! or Google account. Then relax. You’ve done what you can and there is no reason to lose sleep.
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