Massive data leaks and breaches are continually piling faster upon each other—just in the last month, we learned about a few billion records lost through National Public Data, another few million through Medicare, and 100 million through MC2 Data. Companies that handle background checks and other data processing services just aren’t securing the sensitive data flowing through their fingers.
nfortunately, we the public must take the brunt of the consequences, which comes in the form of higher risk of fraud, identity theft, account takeovers, and other schemes seeking to rob of us our money.
But you don’t have to leave yourself open to such attacks—at least, not wide open. You can make it more difficult for bad actors to steal from you. Because your time is just as precious as your cash, and trying to recover from a successful scam can take both from you.
Make your login methods stronger
The more that passwords leak onto the internet, the easier it becomes for hackers to guess what yours might be. Not only can they feed that data into their cracking tools, but they can also use the passwords for credential stuffing attacks—that is, plugging in known email and password combinations around the web to see what accounts can be accessed.
So at minimum, you need passwords that are both strong and unique to safeguard your accounts. (A password manager can help you keep them all straight.)
But even a good password can’t keep out intruders if someone obtains or guesses it. You really want stronger protection—which is where two-factor authentication and/or passkeys come in.
Two-factor authentication (2FA) adds a second hurdle for hackers to clear before account access is granted. Most commonly, an app that generates a one-time code is used as a method for 2FA, but an even more secure method is a hardware dongle like a YubiKey. As a physical item, someone would need to have it in their possession to use it.
