Monday, March 21, 2011

Blog Post #6: What's Your Password?

When it comes to sharing your password with strangers it is pretty obvious that we all know that you should not do so. Often times though, we over look this care and concern when it comes to sharing our passwords with friends. This does not apply only to social networking sites but it also applies to sharing passwords for your email accounts or school learning account. It is unsafe to provide your school learning account because people can then access personal information such as your grades and the classes you are taking. Sometimes people let their friends access their personal school learning account such as eLearning if they need to print out notes or catch up on a lecture that they missed. This can be dangerous though because your netID and password can be saved on your friend's laptop and someone else could obtain access to your account.
Another scenario to keep in mind is that many people believe that they have a secure password when in reality, they don't. Texas A&M requires it's students to take an Information Security Awareness Training. This training is mandatory to help students learn about how to be safe when it comes to online safety on campus. You can find out more about this security training by going to the Texas A&M Information Security Training website.

3 comments:

  1. I agree. During the start of my freshman year, I thought it was an annoyance to have to reset my password all the time. Now that I have seen what information is stored on our accounts, it is dangerous to be hacked. They are just to help. I know some websites, like Hotmail, give you an option for automatic resets for your password every 2 weeks. Nice work!

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  2. I agree with all of this. Personally I haven't ever shared my password with anyone other than my parents but I have seen the damage it can cause. About a year ago my friend's "howdy" account was hacked during the registration process and they dropped her from all her classes because she had not completely signed out of her howdyaccount when she logged off. The access that people can get to information even by accident is ridiculous now-a-days and I am actually thankful for the required changing of passwords peridodically.

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  3. I also agree with your blog. It is tedious to keep changing the password to log onto the server at school. Like you said it's for our own good you never know the kind of people you may be surrounded with at a place in time. I have heard of cases where people have been caught trying to steal another persons pin number or account number for their debit card while paying something. That shows how aware we should be when it comes to identity.

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