Event Marketing Articles and Event Promotion

Protecting Your Online Identity - What You Can Do

Today I’m going to share with you a FREE Report on the simple things you can do to protect your online identity. Just click on a link below to access the report.  The information is most applicable for the twenty and thirty somethings. In addition, there is a simple technique you can use to determine when anyone posts information about you in Google.

• Protecting Yourself Online Report (HTML Version)
• Protecting Yourself Online Report (PDF Version) Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Want to Automatically know when something about You is posted in Google?
Use a Google Alert. Google will send you an email each time the words you enter, in this case your name, show up as a new posting within Google. You can customize the options to your preference. Different alert types include Blog postings, news stories, videos, web sites, and various groups. You can select the comprehensive selection, under type, to get an alert for any of the previous categories.  Alerts can be set for once a week, daily, or as it happens. Go to http://www.google.com/alerts for more information.  Yahoo and MSN also have similar services.

Additional Resources:

• Watch Out People Are Googling You!
• Leveraging People Googling You to Your Advantage
• Job Out of College - A System for Finding a Great Job after Your Graduate College

Why Weak Passwords are BAD!

Today I'm checking in from lovely Kerhonkson, New York.  A quaint cove nestled in the Catskill Mountains of New York State.  The air outside is clean, crisp, and refreshing. It reminds me of Canada.  And when I think of Canada, I think of my good friend "Gnome." He is one of Canada's top ethical hackers and provides me with some of the best Internet security advice available.  His job is to ensure companies that they are as secure as possible on the Internet.

Enter into the discussion the topic of personal passwords.  Everyone has a password for something they do online.  Passwords represent the front line of defense against people who might look to compromise your personal or business information.  It is important to ask yourself "how secure is my password?"  Here is a comforting statistic brought to you by the United States Department of Agriculture:

"Your computer password is the foundation of your computer security, and it needs to stand up against the tools that hackers have for cracking it. There are 308,000,000 possible letter combinations for a six letter password using all upper case or all lower case letters.

A readily available password cracker can check all of them in only 2 minutes 40 seconds."

Pretty comforting thought, eh?  You need to make sure you have the best password possible.

Example of a bad passwords:
"bob1967" (Name and birthday)
"Blueleaf23" (Simple words and numbers)

Hint: Gnome told me to include a space in all passwords. The default setting for many automated password cracking programs don't check for spaces.  Also use nonstandard characters such as "%, !, &" and "MiXed cAse"  Doing these simple things will ensure you are significantly more secure.

Example of good passwords:
"45g-$ sd"
"2^hu4@1p"

Aside from a good password, you should also adopt a password protocol.  Other people engage in the nefarious activity of social hacking. Social hackers are individuals who misrepresent themselves as agents for various companies. This involves trying to get people to unwillingly give up their passwords. Never give out your passwords to anyone over email, telephone, or otherwise.

Keep yourself "safer" on the online world.  Use a good password for everything you do online.