The Best Way to Protect Yourself from Hackers

In light of Yahoo’s recent hacking where 500 million user accounts had been leaked, it’s a good time to ensure your accounts are safe and your personal data is secure.

Two-factor authentication

You are probably already familiar with two-factor authentication if you have a smartphone and a Facebook account, but it shouldn’t be ignored as it is a great way to prevent people hacking into your accounts.

All you have to do is provide the service (e.g. Facebook or Gmail) with your phone number and they will text you an access code when you log into a new device. Enter both your password and the access code and you are good to go.

You only have to do this once per device but it ensures that other devices can’t log into your account without your permission.

So even if your password slips into the wrong persons hands you have another layer of defence to prevent anyone logging into your account without having access to your mobile too.

Of course, using a complex password is still your primary defence for unwanted access to your accounts but it is not good enough for more serious accounts like social networks, emails and bank accounts that hold extremely important information about you.

Unfortunately, not every service offers two-factor authentication but all of the major ones do like Facebook, Google, Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn and practically every bank that offers online banking.

It’s also worth noting that not all two-factor authentication require a phone number, some will send the code to your email address or ask you to use an app like Google Authenticator.

So if you have the option, ensure all your accounts have two-factor authentication in place!