Cyberitas

Yesterday I was on Google and I noticed that they had added a link to the bottom of the homepage. It directed to http://www.google.com/goodtoknow/ where Google shared some tips on safety and privacy, both in terms of the general realm of the internet and on how Google handles privacy/data collection.

From the perspective a young, internet-savvy generation, most of the tips that Google suggests seem to be common sense (run Windows Update/Apple Software Update, don’t click on weird links that you get in your email, signing out of accounts when you use public computers). However, I did like the article on choosing a secure password. I’ll be the first to admit that I use essentially the same password for all of my activity online – instead of remembering different passwords to different accounts, I can just remember one “master” password and use that extra brainpower to cram for my psychology and math midterms.

Unfortunately, it’s that great of an idea – it means that if one account is compromised, maybe from a site with not that strong of security, all of your accounts could potentially be at risk. I learned this the hard way back in middle school; I let a stranger online use one of my smaller accounts for a MMOFPS and he ended up stealing items from my primary account since I used the same password for all my accounts.

I also liked the tip on using a password from a song, film, or play. For example, “To be or not to be, that is the question” can be simplified into password form as “2bon2btitq” is a seemingly random, near un-guessable password at a first glance, but easy to remember.

That being said, choosing a secure password is, while important, a small worry compared to some breaches of privacy perpetrated by large online companies (even Google, whose motto is “don’t be evil”). I’ll discuss this in further detail the next time I post!