Quora, the popular website where users can crowdsource answers to all kinds of topics, announced hackers gained personal information from up to 100 million of its users.
Users account information such as email addresses and passwords may have been compromised.
This comes on the heels of a massive data breach of Marriott’s systems, where hackers gained access to the data of 500 million users.
It all begs the question: is there something we can do?
The answer is yes, says security expert Fred Kneip with CyberGRX. He admits, however, that protecting your information can be frustrating.
“Everyone hates changing their passwords,” Kneip says. “No one can keep track of them.”
We all have to do it, he says. Kneip also says never use the same password for all your accounts.
“If you use the same password over and over, a hacker if they compromise one of those companies—let’s say Twitter or Facebook most recently--but you use that to log in to your office or a bank, what they do is they take that password, that login and password set, and they apply it universally to see where else could that work,” Kneip explains.
Suddenly, all your accounts risk being compromised. Kneip says a totally different password for each login is best, but even changing one character at the end will protect you from 90 percent of hackers.
So, if you’re bad at keeping track of all your passwords, what can help? Kneip suggests encrypted password-keeping apps like Last Pass and One Password.
"Very straightforward; they’re free,” he says. “Then, you just have to have one master password that you open back up to.”
The good news is, Kneip he believes we won’t need passwords for anything. Instead, our own biometric data will log us in to everything.
