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With Internet fraud on the increase it is becoming increasingly important to protect yourself and your personal details. One slip up can cause sufficient damage to mess up your day and possibly cost you dearly. One thing you should do for a start is to protect your passwords.

Speak to anyone involved in the Internet security industry and they will tell you it is very important to have different passwords for every major account you log into. Obvious, right? Well yes, it is, and companies try to “help” by forcing you to pick a strong password, or even providing one for you. That’s great, right?

Well no, not really. Think of it this way. You have an email account which you access every day, often from multiple locations. It stands to reason that you log into your email account more than all your other accounts. The more you use it the more vulnerable it is.

You may think that last statement is not accurate, that your password is strong and nobody can know it. You might be right, but the first time you need to use a public computer to access your email, can you be sure there isn’t a keylogger on the computer you are using? Can you be sure their systems are secure so there isn’t someone sniffing your password?

This all sounds a little far fetched, and indeed it is rare, but it does happen. Every day there are many people whose email accounts get compromised. It is the most popular type of account to hack.

The main reason email accounts are hacked is to use these accounts for spam, but the other reason they are hacked is they contain all sorts of account data.

However, this is often not your fault. You sign up using their registration form, enter your secure password and wait for an email from them. You check your email and there is your username and password as a “helpful reminder” in plain text!

If a hacker manages to hack your email account they now have access to your email, as well as the other account you have signed up for. If you happen to use the same password for other accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Bank!) then they may try to gain access to those too.

This is a big problem, and as individuals we can try to stem it by deleting these emails (from the trash too!), but the real issue is companies sending them out in the first place.

As a final word of advice, try to keep to these following rules:

• Keep your email password as secure as possible (letters + numbers etc)
• Use different passwords for all accounts (not even similar)
• Change your main email password every now and then
• Delete emails with passwords in them (and empty the trash)
• Never trust a public computer. If you must use one, change your password asap
• Never use any common passwords