A recent survey conducted by TransUnion shows that about half of Canadians were targeted by fraud in the first half of 2023, with fraud attempts up 40 per cent from the previous year.
For your phone and PC security, it’s crucial to resist the temptation of using similar passwords across different accounts. Instead, opt for unique, strong passwords for each account to enhance your security. Additionally, strive to memorize your passwords and PINs so that you don’t have to write them down, reducing the risk of unauthorized access to your accounts.
Who writes and fact checks this stuff? Password managers have been a thing for a long time now. It should be considered some kind of malpractice now to ever make a recommendation other than “use an open-source password manager to generate and store randomly generated passwords.” That should be followed up with a list of highly regarded options, like Bitwarden and KeePass, both of which are available for virtually every platform.
Open-source means that the source code is available for anyone to read. (It’s also closely connected to copyleft licenses, which explicitly allow copying and derivative works, but they aren’t quite the same.) It’s generally very good for security software to be open-source, because it means anyone can see how it works and highlight security flaws, and it makes it much harder for malicious code (i.e. a password manager that sends all your passwords to the creator) to sneak in under the radar.
Sorry. If was a real writer instead of just an internet ranter, I would have either clarified the term or used different ones.
Open source software works something like Wikipedia. It’s not perfect, but the fact that anyone can examine what’s written and contribute means that eventually the errors get sorted out.
What I should probably have said is something more along the lines of “… one of the password manager apps that are frequently reviewed and audited for privacy, reliability, and correctness, like Bitwarden or KeePass. Both of those, and the vast majority of trustworthy password managers are available for virtually every platform.”
Who writes and fact checks this stuff? Password managers have been a thing for a long time now. It should be considered some kind of malpractice now to ever make a recommendation other than “use an open-source password manager to generate and store randomly generated passwords.” That should be followed up with a list of highly regarded options, like Bitwarden and KeePass, both of which are available for virtually every platform.
What is open source?
Open-source means that the source code is available for anyone to read. (It’s also closely connected to copyleft licenses, which explicitly allow copying and derivative works, but they aren’t quite the same.) It’s generally very good for security software to be open-source, because it means anyone can see how it works and highlight security flaws, and it makes it much harder for malicious code (i.e. a password manager that sends all your passwords to the creator) to sneak in under the radar.
Sorry. If was a real writer instead of just an internet ranter, I would have either clarified the term or used different ones.
Open source software works something like Wikipedia. It’s not perfect, but the fact that anyone can examine what’s written and contribute means that eventually the errors get sorted out.
What I should probably have said is something more along the lines of “… one of the password manager apps that are frequently reviewed and audited for privacy, reliability, and correctness, like Bitwarden or KeePass. Both of those, and the vast majority of trustworthy password managers are available for virtually every platform.”