How To Easily Get Hacked

Password security is serious business, especially when we live in a world where we conduct the majority of business electronically. We can deposit checks via smartphone, we can transfer money easily between accounts with the push of a button and we pay at the stores with a piece of plastic. 

Most apps and programs that deal with finances have different encryption systems that make doing all of this possible and safe, but there is one downfall to all of this and it has to do with your email. In a way, your email is the key to all of your accounts. Why? If you lose your password or if an app wants to verify your identity, it will typically send you something to your email in order to continue the log in process. 

Email is pretty secure nowadays and email servers don't get hacked as often as some of the other websites we frequent. This is the exact reason why your email password should be different than your other passwords. Let's say that Facebook or Instagram gets hacked, both Facebook and Instagram have your email and if your password is the same as your email, a hacker can easily log into your email. So even though your email didn't get hacked directly, someone can still gain access to your email. Once someone is in your email, they can see what other accounts you have registered with that email by doing a quick search within your inbox. If online banking is tied to that email, they could easily go in and reset your password by sending themselves a link to log in.

The reason why we are talking to you about this today is because of an incident that happened to one of our clients. Someone had hacked into a realtor's email and used the realtors email to send a letter asking for a wire transfer as part of the downpayment for a home. The buyer, trusting the realtor, did the transaction as requested. It wasn't the realtor who was requesting the money, instead it was being wired to someone else's account. 

As you can probably imagine, this created a lot of confusion and frustration for all parties involved, and it also made you question the realtor's ability to keep a transaction secure. At the end of the day, this could've happened to anyone but it is just an example of how easy it is for hackers to trick you into doing things that could really hurt you. 

So our advise to you, don't use the same password for all your different accounts because even though your email might be secure, if you use the same password and another website gets hacked, a hacker who is able to log into your email will gain access to pretty much all of your accounts.