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McAfee: More Online Safety Tips

Image by McAfee

Image by McAfee

With the recent breach of eBay’s database containing passwords, email and physical addresses, phone numbers, and dates of birth, McAfee would like to offer a few tips on how to protect ourselves.

“Similar to washing your hands before meals, consider these precautions basic digital hygiene practices,” said Mike Fey, executive vice president, general manager of corporate products, and CTO at McAfee.

If you’re an eBay user…

  • Change your password immediately
  • Keep an eye out for phishing scams referencing your personal information
  • Track your credit and debit card accounts for unusual activity
  • Keep an eye out for snail mail and phone fraud given physical addresses were compromised along with other information

Good practices for password safety
While many websites utilize encryption measures to secure data, it needs to be known that the longer a password remains the same, the more likely it will be discovered by someone seeking to gain access to private and confidential information.

Changing your password ensures security by:

  • revoking access to any unauthorized person with access to your account, and
  • restarting the process for anyone trying to break your password.

Some tips from McAfee for best practices regarding password security include the following:

  • Change your password frequently, and make it stronger after every change.
  • Use a different password for every password-protected account.
    • Otherwise, if someone is able to gain access to one password, he will literally own your online presence.
  • It’s always a good idea to use letters, numbers, and symbols in passwords.
    • This makes it harder for hackers to guess your password.

For more information, check out this  blog post from Gary Davis, vice president of Global Consumer Marketing at McAfee.

This video presents “EBay Asks Users to Change Password After Breach.”

  • E-commerce site eBay is asking users to change their password after a cyberattack compromised a database containing encrypted passwords. (May 21)