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Cyber news Cyber Security

Safety tip of the day

How safe are you with your passwords with your internet browser?

Do you practice good password security?

Do you use your web browser to save passwords from websites?

To answers these questions, I’ll share with an experience I had. I won’t share the brand name of this web browser just to stay out of trouble. A friend of mine bought a new computer and asked me to help him with the initial setup. We went through all of the normal configuration of a new laptop and transferred his information from the old laptop to the new one.  After the setup he went through the new laptop to see if anything was missing from the old laptop. Turns out that he didn’t document some login and password information from some websites he uses. I did a little digging and found out that the web browser he was using would ask to save this information from websites. I found this in the settings of the web browser and plain as day, an unsecure folder with an entire list of websites he visited with the user I.D. and password associated with it. I’m no Cyber security expert, If I can locate this, then the criminals won’t have any problem at all. In this folder I found 41 unique websites with all the credentials needed to log in to that website including the ones he was missing.

The fix.

Don’t save any login information in your web browser. I would recommend using a password manager as there are a number of good ones out there and a lot of them will offer a basic account for free. Adding a password manager is adding an extra layer of protection from getting your information stolen, putting your login information behind password protection.