The vast majority of people online recycle the same passwords across multiple online accounts, making it far easier for hackers to break into their accounts. And now, inexpensive and easy-to-use software has increasingly found its way online to make it even easier for hackers to gain access to websites and devices.
Old methods, new efficiency
“Credential stuffing,” as it is known in the cybersecurity space, has been around for a long time. This tactic essentially involves looking for email addresses and passwords that have been dumped online after being stolen from one website or service, and then checking to see whether the same credentials work on another site.
But now, a new generation of credential-stuffing programs is helping unskilled malevolent online actors check the login credentials of millions of users against hundreds of websites and online services. These new hacking tools provide the code required to check whether hundreds of the most popular platforms are accessible with specific, previously leaked usernames and passwords.
It’s time for a password manager
The new tools have made it critical to never reuse or use similar passwords on more than one account. This can all too easily result in your passwords becoming public knowledge—they only have to be leaked once to appear on the lists hackers share.
By far the surest way to protect your login credentials from theft is to use a password manager. A good password manager will not only locally encrypt your passwords in one stored place, calling them up to autofill login info only when you need them. It will also think up complex, random alphanumeric combinations for you, and even scan the internet to see if any of your old passwords have been leaked onto hackers’ lists. ByePass from iolo technologies can perform all of these tasks for you, as well as securely store your credit card information.
Password management companies estimate that only about one percent of internet users utilize some kind of password manager. Be among the one percent: protect your online credentials while avoiding having to think up, remember, or type passwords with ByePass, available as a stand-alone browser extension, Android mobile app, or as part of the comprehensive PC optimization and security software suite Phoenix 360.
