I’ve harped on password security many times before. Today I’d like to tell you about the most important password in your possession. This one string of characters the only thing keeping the hordes at bay.
Take a minute to ponder the multitude of passwords you use for your various websites. If you’re like many people, you have an ordinary password for trivial stuff; then you have some stronger passwords for sites that involve money. For a long time, I have taken my passwords very seriously, which means keeping an encrypted file of all my passwords, itself protected with the most secure passphrase ever. No one’s getting into that!
But here’s the catch: bad guys don’t have to get into my master password vault. The only password they need is my primary email password.
How does my email password drop my trousers? Simple: if bad guys have access to my email, they can click “I forgot my password” on every site in the world and would have access to my entire world. If the evil monster cleared out the emails before I read them, I'd have no idea. And I’d be screwed.
Tech-savvy readers will be screaming two-factor at this point. But this article is for those who probably will never set up two-factor authentication.
Two-factor aside, your primary email password is the password to protect and change regularly. You need to write it down and keep it in a safe place, such as one of these lovely password books, or Keeper Security's password vault.
