Account Security

This guide will give you lots of hints and tips on how to keep any accounts safe. Be it Steam, MSN, or anything else that requires a username and password to log in, you could find some things that you did not know in here.

Creating your account

Usernames

The same rules apply whether you are creating user accounts for online games, or online banking. You will normally be asked to choose a username. Self explanitory; you choose a name which you will remember and relates to you in some way. Obviously, it doesn’t have to relate to you, but if you forget your username you might not be able to get it back. Also, normally a username cannot be changed, therefore if you pick some embarassing name for a joke, the chances are you are stuck with that.

Email Addresses

Email Addresses should always be your own. If you make a fake email address up to stop getting spammed and you forget your password, this makes it impossible for you to reset your password, due to the fact that 9/10 times, a link will be sent to your email address as confirmation that you wanted to reset your password.

Passwords

This guide I have written tells you how to set a good password. Here are a couple of things you should never do regarding passwords:

• Never use the same password for everything; if somebody cracks your password to one thing, they could have access to everything else as well. This will (I guarantee you) be a disaster, because if the hacker is focusing on locking you out of everything, he will change all your passwords as well as have access to your accounts! If that doesn’t cut it for you, a more serious attack could result in you being locked out of your bank account, and the hacker using your money.
• You should not choose a random string of characters for a password either. Something like, “4.klOYY$sa” should never be used due to the fact that it is easily forgotton, and it is also hard to type. You could easily make a mistake three times in a row and get locked out of the website.

Now that those two things have been covered, I will now go over the good pointers to a strong password. In order to come up with a strong password, you are required to do a bit of thinking. All passwords should be at least 12 characters long, and containing numbers, letters and symbols. This could take at least 15 days to crack if you’re a clever hacker, and most websites will have locked one out of their website by that time. Here are some steps to creating a strong password:

1. Choose a random object from the room you are in right now. I am going to choose my bedside table, because I bashed my head off it last night.
2. If you remove the space between the two words, you obviously get bedsidetable.
3. Jumble the word up; a hacker uses a dictionary to help him crack passwords. If the password consists of nonsense words, it will make the hacker’s life harder. I have chosen to jumble it up as follows: debdiseletab
4. This needs some numbers now. Something good to use is your age. However, we are going to make ourselves three years older. Therefore, I get the number 20.
5. Turn the two numbers around to give you 02.
6. Add this onto your word to give you debdiseletab02.
7. Finally, it needs some symbols. Let’s take the # symbol. Add this onto the end of your password, to give you: debdiseletab02#
8. This password is 15 characters long, contains all the elements of a good password.

With a password like this, the only real way to get hacked is if you tell it to someone.

Keeping details safe

If you go flashing your password around to people, it is inevitable that you will get hacked. Keep your details to yourself. This next part of the guide will tell you the do’s and dont’s of storing details.

Firstly, I’d suggest not storing any passwords on your computer. Some viruses are programmed to seek out passwords on computers, and if you get one of these viruses, it is possible that user accounts you own could start doing strange things.

Also, if you do not regularly back up your files, a computer crash could result in loss of data. If you easily forget your passwords, this could be a nightmare for you.

So, a possible solution would be to keep a notebook of all your usernames and passwords, and keep it in a hidden place where only you know where it’s kept. This is what I do. I just like to know I can easily check back on a password incase I’ve forgotton one. And for goodness sake, don’t let any friends see it!

Keeping a Steam Account safe

Since Anti-Hackers! is related to Steam, this part is focused on Steam. The most common way that people get hacked on Steam is through the phishing websites created by hackers. People get tricked into entering their username and password for Steam to get free games added to their account. It is, of course a lie.

The link to the websites will be sent through Steam Chat windows to whoever. This is when you get an Incoming Chat Request, from someone you don’t know. If you decide to accept it, and it turns out that this is someone trying to hack you then the best thing to do would be to ignore the person, and report the website to us.

However, if you would like to have some fun, you can do things like pretend the website is in a different language, or you could pretend to fall for the scam then close the window.

I hope this guide helped you. If you need to know anything, would like to make a suggestion for the guide, or anything else, feel free to leave a comment below.