“Protecting Your Online Life With Secure Passwords” plus 1 more

Protecting Your Online Life With Secure Passwords

Posted: 28 Jun 2011 06:30 AM PDT

With all of the recent online services and companies falling under attack to hackers in the past few months, it seems only fitting to talk about password creation and management. There are a lot of resources out there discussing this, but it never hurts to revisit this topic time and again because of its importance.

Password management isn’t necessarily a difficult thing to do, yet it does seem like a bit of an annoyance to most people. When it comes to password management, you will hear the famous line, “I don’t really care about changing my passwords regularly. I have nothing important online anyways.” Let’s see if you have nothing important online when your PayPal account gets taken over because you thought the password “password” was good enough.

In my opinion, it is an “internet user’s” responsibility to make sure that they keep secure passwords and update them on a regular basis. In this article we will discuss how to make your online presence more secure and keep it secure.

The easy fundamentals

First thing is first; creating a strong password.

A strong password is a mixture of alpha-numeric characters and symbols, has a good length (hopefully 15 characters or longer), and doesn’t necessarily represent some word or phrase. If the service you are signing up for doesn’t allow passwords over a certain length, like 8 characters, always use the maximum length.

Here are some examples of strong passwords:
* i1?,2,2\1′(:-%Y
* ZQ5t0466VC44PmJ
* mp]K{ dCFKVplGe]PBm1mKdinLSOoa (30 characters)

And not so good examples
* sammy1234
* password123
* christopher

You can check out PC Tools Password Generator here. This is a great way to make up some very strong passwords. Of course the more random passwords are harder to remember, but that is where password management comes into play.

Managing your passwords

I know some people that keep their passwords in an unencrypted text file. That’s not a good idea. I suppose that if you aren’t doing much online and are decent at avoiding viruses and such, it could be OK, but I would never recommend it.

So, where do you keep your strong passwords for all the services that you visit on a daily basis?

1Password can be locked down with a master password to protect all of your sensitive data.

There are a ton of password safes out there including KeePass, RoboForm, Passpack, Password Safe, LastPass, and 1Password. If and when I recommend any of these I always count on LastPass and 1Password.

Both LastPass and 1Password offer different entry types for online services logins (PayPal, Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, etc.), credit cards and bank accounts, online identities, and other types of sensitive information. Both have excellent reviews and only differ in a few subtle ways. One of the ways that is more notable is that LastPass keeps your encrypted password Vault online where 1Password allows you to keep it locally or shared through Dropbox. Either way, you are the holder of the encryption keys and both ways are very secure.

LastPass and 1Password both offer cross-platform support as well as support for Android and iOS (LastPass even has BlackBerry support). 1Password is a little pricey ($39.99 for either Windows or Mac) where LastPass has free options as well as premium upgrades that allow for mobile syncing.

Upkeep

You should probably change your passwords for your “important” accounts at least every 6 weeks. When I say “important” accounts I am referring to ones that you just couldn’t imagine losing access to. For me that would be Gmail, PayPal, eBay, Amazon, all my FTP accounts and hosting accounts, Namecheap, etc. Basically these include any account where financial information could be lost or accessed as well as accounts that could be totally screwed up (like my webserver).

There is no hard and fast rule to how often you should change your passwords, but 6 to 8 weeks should be pretty good.

Alternatives

You may think that all of this is just too much to manage on a daily basis. I will admit it is kind of annoying to have to change your passwords and use a password manager on a daily basis. For those people out there that don’t want to go through all of the hub-bub of super-secure, encrypted, password management, here are a few tips to keep you safe:

Create a unique and hard to guess “base password” and then a pattern to use for each site you logon onto. For instance a base password could be “Ih2BaSwAa” (this stands for “I have two brothers and sisters who are annoying”). Then you would add something “site specific” to the end of it. For Twitter Ih2BaSwAaTWTTR, Facebook Ih2BaSwAaFCBK, etc. This is sort of unsecure, but probably more secure than 99% of the passwords out there.
Don’t write your passwords down in public places. If you want to keep track of passwords on something written, keep it on you at least. The problem is that if you get your wallet stolen you are still out of luck.
Don’t use the same passwords for every service. I’m not even going to explain this; just don’t do it.

These are just a few things that can be done rather than keeping your passwords in a management system. Personally, with over 100 entries in my password management system, I couldn’t even dream of doing any other way. But those out there with only a few passwords, having a simpler system may be beneficial.

So, if you want to be a “responsible internet citizen” or you just don’t want to lose your precious account data, then creating and maintaining strong passwords for your online accounts is a must.

9 Ways To Improve Your Body As Quickly As Possible

Posted: 28 Jun 2011 06:00 AM PDT

If you get in your car in Los Angeles to drive to New York, do you just pull out of your driveway and start down the road? Or do you get a map and plan your route? The answer is obvious – careful planning pays off. So if your goal is to become fit, lean and strong it’s important to know exactly what you need to do to reach this goal. Here are some valuable tips to include in any plan which will help you arrive at your goal safely and efficiently.

Tip #1: Be Alert For Opportunities All Day Long

Focus on becoming stronger because there are myriad opportunities throughout the day to strengthen your body. As simple an effort as walking up the stairs to the third floor, rather than taking an elevator, will eventually produce a noticeable effect. Yes, weights lifting, exercise machines and structured sessions are powerful – but so are simple activities carried out every day.

Tip #2: Rest Is Just As Important As Exercise

Make certain you value and allow rest and recovery time. Many believe that if an intense workout feels good and will build muscle quickly, then the smart thing to do is to exercise even more. Muscle builds when exercise tears the muscle down, because it recovers as newer, stronger muscle. Without that recovery time, your muscles absolutely cannot increase in size or strength. Beginners usually start with three workouts per week and the duration and frequency can increase as they grow in strength and power but your body will respond more quickly and more dramatically if allowed to rest during strenuous activities.

Tip #3: What’s “Best” Is What You Will Persist In Doing

There is a constant and ongoing war among fitness experts about whether free weights or weight machines are superior. As far as you are concerned, whatever works best for you is the right choice. If you love competing with the weights on a machine then by all means choose that option. If you despise machines, but eagerly grab that set of dumbbells, then go for it. There is no point whatsoever in choosing exercises that you hate and won’t stick with, no matter what the ‘experts’ say.

Tip #4: You Didn’t Arrive At Your Current Condition Overnight

If you’re flabby and overweight – in other words, totally dissatisfied with the condition of your body – always remember that you didn’t get there overnight. In other words, impatience is a huge mistake. It requires years of neglect and misuse to create problems in your body and it will take some time to repair them. Exercising for a week and then quitting because there are no visible changes is foolish and short sighted. Not only that, but more failure will further erode your confidence and increase the sad condition of your body. You can drastically shorten the time it takes to achieve superb conditioning by using wisdom and discipline but you won’t see changes by 5PM on the first day.

Tip #5: “Compound” Exercises Are More Efficient

Consider that “compound” exercises will get results faster than those exercises that use only one muscle or one muscle group at a time. Yes, your abs may be a disgrace but focusing only on an ab machine won’t pay the dividends of full body exercises. And always remember that exercises which work multiple muscle groups will build fitness much faster – and that’s what we all want, isn’t it?

Tip #6: Don’t Exercise Mindlessly

Don’t exercise of mindlessly. If you pay close attention to your muscles and your body while working out, your results will be much more powerful. On the surface, that doesn’t seem to make sense. But famous, skilled athletes and bodybuilders have stated time and again that they can literally direct their muscles as they see fit.

Tip #7: Natural Sleep = Health and A Fit Body

Get as much ‘natural’ sleep as possible, meaning that drugs and sleeping pills interfere with the natural repair of the body that occurs every night. When we sleep, growth hormone, or HGH. is released into our bodies. HGH stimulates healthy growth, cell repair and the regeneration which is necessary for muscle development. Growth hormone is naturally produced by the body and many athletic scandals have occurred because athletes were building their bodies with the use of artificial HGH. Synthetic growth hormone, even when legal and prescribed by a doctor, can have dangerous side effects. You want to maximize your production naturally and this is done while we’re asleep.

Tip #8: Pepperoni Pizza Is NOT The Perfect Diet Food (Sorry!)

The perfect diet for an athlete or body builder centers around proteins, certain fats that include essential fatty acids (EFAs) and complex carbohydrates like vegetables, fruits and whole grains. Most fitness experts recommend eating multiple small meals rather than three larger ones. This keeps the metabolism working constantly and is less likely to result in fat or overweight.

Tip #9: Water, Water and More Water

Drink lots and lots of water. Water keeps your muscles hydrated which makes them work more efficiently and helps them recover more rapidly. It’s important to know that soft drinks, tea and coffee generally dehydrate the body so don’t assume they are helping your muscles. They’re not.

Superlative fitness requires self-discipline and long term dedication to your goal. Anyone who is going to make this kind of serious commitment naturally wants to reach their goal as quickly as possible and to do this we must be efficient. Following these rules will speed you to your ideal body as quickly as possible.

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