Monthly Archives: November 2011

Simple ways to add security to your Google email account

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In practical terms, I have three action points I preach to anyone who will listen. Really, only two and a half.

The half step is extremely important, but I count it only as a half because it applies specifically to users of Gmail rather than other online systems. Here it is: if you use Gmail, please use Google’s new “two-step verification” system. In practice this means that to log into your account from any place other than your own computer, you have to enter an additional code, from Google, shown on your mobile phone. On your own computer, you enter a code only once every 30 days. This is not an airtight solution, but it can thwart nearly all of the remote attacks that affect Gmail thousands of times a day. Even though the hacker in Lagos has your password, if he doesn’t have your cell phone, he can’t get in.

In case you’ve missed the point: if you use Gmail, use this system. Also, make sure the recovery information for your account—a backup e-mail address or cell phone where you can receive password-reset information—is current. Google uses these to verify that you are the real owner.

Next we have password selection, that seemingly impossible task. The science, psychology, and sociology of creating strong passwords is a surprisingly well-chronicled and fascinating field. On The Atlantic’s Web site, we will describe some of the main strategies and the reasoning behind them. Even security professionals recognize the contradiction: the stronger the password, the less likely you are to remember it. Thus the Post-it notes with passwords, on monitor screens or in desk drawers.

But there is a middle ground, of passwords strong enough to create problems for hackers and still simple enough to be manageable. There are more details on our site, but strategies include:

• Choose a long, familiar-to-you sequence of ordinary words, with spaces between them as in an ordinary sentence, which more and more sites now allow. “Lake Winnebago is deep and chilly,” for instance. Or “my favorite packer is not brett favre.” You could remember a phrase like that, but a hacker’s computer, which couldn’t tell spaces from characters, would see only one forbiddingly long password sequence.

• Choose a shorter sequence of words that are not “real” English words. I once lived in a Ghanaian village called Assin Fosu. I can remember its name easily, but it would be hard to guess. Even harder if I added numbers or characters.

• Choose a truly obscure, gibberish password—“V*!amYEg5M5!3R” is one I generated just now with the LastPass system, and you’re welcome to it—and then find a way to store it. Having it written down in your wallet is one, though the paper it’s on shouldn’t say “Passwords” at the top. The approach I prefer, and use for some passwords, is to entrust them to online managers like LastPass or RoboForm. Even if their corporate sites were hacked, that wouldn’t reveal all your passwords, since the programs work by storing part of the encoding information in the cloud and part on your own machine.

At a minimum, any step up from “password,” “123456,” or your own birthday is worthwhile.

Finally, use different passwords. Not hundreds of different ones, for the hundreds of different places that require logins of some kind. The guide should be: any site that matters needs its own password—one you don’t currently use for any other site, and that you have never used anywhere else.

“Using an important password anywhere else is just like mailing your house key to anyone who might be making a delivery,” Michael Jones of Google said. “If you use your password in two places, it is not a valid password.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/11/hacked/8673/?single_page=…