Maintaining a secure computer is a good defense against becoming a victim of Identity Theft. Use a secure password. By secure, I mean a password that is not easily guessable, such as a word you may find in the dictionary. These types of passwords can be found by someone using what is known as a “dictionary attack” This type of attack involves using the words that are found in the dictionary and comparing those to a hash that has been generated by the Operating System. If the attack matches the hashes, then the password has been compromised. Don’t use birthdays or Social Security Numbers as well. It has been recommended that your password be at least 8 characters long, including small and capital letters, numbers, and special characters.
A password like “alphabet” can easily be compromised. If you were to change it up a little by making every other letter a capital, “AlPhAbEt”, this will improve the security. You can then take it a step further and replace the “E” with the number “3”, so then your password looks like “AlPhAb3t”. Then take the “l” and change it to the number...