Regardless of how you feel about Alaska Governor and John McCain's running mate Sarah Palin using a Yahoo email account to conduct official state business, you likely joined many in gasping at the audacity of a team of anonymous hacker vigilantes.
What Palin's Email Hack Means To You
After all, things should go through their proper channels, right? If investigators (heck, even the press, though it would have still been illegal) had been involved in digging through Palin's subversive emailing, there wouldn't be quite the resounding cries of sympathy. That sort of defeats Anonymous' purpose, doesn't it, by making people identify with the horror of some amorphous body cracking your email account?
Regardless of intent, it was obvious to many they had crossed a line here, hence authorities caring enough to suddenly look for them.
So what do people internalizing the Palin email hack need to think about in regard to their own account? Well, there are a few things, and they're pretty standard, but it may be time for a review.
It'd be convenient to blame Yahoo for this, but likely it is the result of Palin's own computer security failings. (One imagines she hadn't given it much thought as Governor of Alaska, but hitting the international stage made her an instant target.)
Sophos has put together a nice video identifying common mistakes people make when setting up and using Web-based email accounts. It compares Paris Hilton's mobile phone hack to Palin's breach, making it sort of an interesting throwback to those celebrity criticisms and comparisons early from McCain.
Basically, the tips are as follows and you should know them as well by now as you know the proper way to cross a street: avoid dictionary words as passwords; don't use the same password across multiple sites; it's best to use a combination of letters and numbers for your password; think very carefully about those "secret questions" they all ask and make sure the answers wouldn't be easily guessable (especially if your biography is traversing every news outlet there is); and don't log-in via insecure Wi-Fi connections-your information could be intercepted.
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SecurityProNews is a daily online and email publication focusing on internet security issues.
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