Hey! You Stole My Name!

A long time and a lot of money later, she has her domain name back. Not only was it annoying and expensive, but her site disappeared from the web to be replaced by a parking site in another language.

Don’t let this happen to you!  Make sure your account with your domain name registrar has your current email address! If they can’t contact you, you won’t know when it is time to renew your lease. Your domain is the most precious part of your site. The files that make up your web site can be replaced or created anew, but if you lose your domain name, no one will know where to find your site. Your web presence will disappear and your search engine ranking will be affected.

Paying attention to your domain account can keep you from getting name-jacked.

1. Use the word “password”.
2. Use consecutive set of numbers or letters: “123456789” “abcdefg”
3. ANY dictionary word alone or with a set of numbers – for ex: “fluffy505”

What to do…

1. Test your password at the Password Meter.
2. The longer the better. I use a 30+ character password for my wireless network, but keep in mind that some sites/applications limit the length to 8 characters.
3. Mix it up: UPPER CASE lower case. Break up a word/name and put it in and around numbers.
For example: Say you lived in Portland, ME from 1978 to 1994 -

pO19rT78lA19nD94 Looks awful, but it makes sense. (lower case, UPPER CASE, number)

Can you add punctuation? (Some sites & applications will let you.) Even better!

pO19rT78!@19nD94
! = i or l
@ = a
# = h
$ = s

Seriously, I have more than a dozen passwords that I use in my life and I rarely have to look them up, because they make sense and have meaning to me.

4. Another idea- Use acronyms:
Take a line from a favorite song, one whose lyrics you remember and use the first letter from each word, or create a pass phrase. Throw in some numbers and punctuation.

“My cat’s tail is as long as he is” mCtIaLaHi20+03

“Oh, what a beautiful morning, oh, what a beautiful day…” OwAbM88oWaBd!

Finally, PLEASE don’t use just one password for everything!! Try at least to come up with a base password and change it slightly for every site.

So pretty! It’s just opening up and it’s fragrance is during the day.

What happened to Malcolm Riddell should not happen to anyone — but it can and does, and that’s the cautionary tale shared by the Florida man, whose garden-variety wireless Internet signal was ”stolen” by a criminal to distribute his library of more than 10 million child pornography photographs.

What a nightmare!  Read the full story here.

Securing your wifi connection isn’t difficult – Here are instructions. As always, creating a strong password is a good idea. Want one that is cryptographic-strength? Try Steve Gibson’s Perfect Passwords Generator.

Not the showiest of orchids, but its fragrance is heavenly!

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