4 recommendations for your digital security 🔑
We’re the team behind oneSafe — a password manager — since 2011 (just launched oneSafe 4 last week on iOS!).
Even if “password managers” are generalized now in 2017 (at least more, compared to 2011), we still have this question asked very often: “Why should I use a password manager?”.
Online security, then and now
Fifteen years ago, life was much simpler. You only had to remember two or three passwords — your debit card PIN number, computer login, and email account password — and that was pretty much it.
Back then, your greatest security risk was getting your house robbed or your car stolen.
Today, with the advent of social media, e-commerce and online banking, you face a more severe security threat than ever before.
How Mr Cook paid the price
Let’s take a look at Mr Tom Cook, a man to whom we can all relate.
Between work and social commitments, Mr. Cook leads a very busy life.
He keeps in touch with his friends over Skype and FaceTime, and shares his thoughts and photos on Facebook, Flickr and Twitter.
He manages three personal banking accounts over the internet and does most of his shopping online.
In total, he has more than 50 online accounts. And to make life easier (even though he’s aware it’s not the ideal thing to do), he uses the same password for most of his accounts. A password he believes strong enough.
One day, Mr Cook goes to a new shopping site and, as usual, he registers with the same password that he uses on most of his other online accounts. The site is then hacked, compromising his personal information not only on the online shopping site, but also on all the other online accounts where he uses the same password.
Does this give hackers access to his email accounts? Facebook and Twitter accounts? Or worse, his bank accounts?
Your security is in your hands
Encryption standards and online security have significantly improved over time and now provide the most comprehensive protection possible.
But all this technology is useless if your passwords are not strong and well protected, in the same way that a house with strong walls isn’t safe if its locks are easy to pick.
4 security recommendations to remember
Ready for the good news?
It’s easy to dramatically improve your online security by applying some simple rules:
• Never re-use the same password. All passwords must be UNIQUE.
• Use a strong password, meaning one that is eight or more characters and is alphanumerical (randomly generated is best, e.g. “H;Y42^FR#73?E”). You can remember the password you chose? Bad news, it means it can be hacked in approximately 30 seconds…
• Never write your passwords down
But these steps are easier said than done! How do you manage over fifty different online accounts without writing your passwords down?
And here is the 4th recommendation:
Tip #4: use a “password manager”!
You can find various solutions (please select renowned solutions), but I’ll talk about oneSafe here (our product 😇).
At time of writing, we have 2.5+ million users in 130 countries, securing their digital life in oneSafe. Our users are (very) demanding, so we had time to learn from them, adjust and improve oneSafe’s security features along the way.
oneSafe is an application that allows you to store all your confidential information — IDs and passwords, internet accounts, banking details, confidential documents, personal photos, etc. — safely and easily on your iPhone, iPad, Android and Mac.
Now you can use a whole range of unique, complex, alphanumerical passwords for all your internet accounts without having to memorize them.
Having them all stored securely in oneSafe means you’ll have them at your fingertips whenever you need them. So you’ll be able to use strong complex passwords and never have to write them down! Plus, oneSafe comes with a password generator that you can use to create unique, strong passwords that are virtually unhackable.
With oneSafe, I wanted to give a concrete example (of a product I know very well).
Nevertheless, my point in this article is not to sell you oneSafe, but to have you realize that you might have to change your habits vis-a-vis your digital security!
If you have other tips to increase your security, I’ll be very interested to read them in the comments of this article.
