by April J.

Created on: May 10, 2011   Last Updated: May 19, 2011

With more and more of our personal information online, it is a constant challenge trying to keep it protected. This challenge can seem daunting, but in reality there are many steps that you can take to secure an online account against hacking attempts. This article will deal with 3 important tools to help keep your online accounts accessible to you and you alone.

A strong password

With a number of password cracking tools out there, having a strong password for your account is essential to proper security. A strong password is at least 7 characters (the longer the better), and has a mix of capital letters, small letters, numbers and/or symbols. The more of these that are present, the more secure it is. Why? Because it increases the number of guesses required to crack it and – because computer programs can do this "guessing" very quickly – you want a password with multiple possibilities that would take a very, very long time to crack.

So how can you possibly think up a password that is tricky enough not to be hackable but easy enough for you to remember? One way is to use a passphrase rather than a password, for example "In 1980 I ate 45 meatballs in 1 night!" You can also try taking the first letter of every word in a sentence - for example "My pet dog's name is Spot!" becomes "MPdnIS!" Whatever method you choose, make sure that you can remember it without having to write it down, because a password is no good if it is sitting on a post-it on your computer monitor... As well, make sure to keep that password hush-hush!

Secure communication

If you knew that someone was listening in on your phone calls, you wouldn't say your credit card number, username or password out loud, so you do not want to do this with your computer. But how do you tell if someone could be listening? One thing to look for before sending secure information, such as a banking transaction, is HTTPS. This is an encrypted and secure method of transferring data from your computer to a website. Signs that HTTPS is being used include a small lock icon at the bottom of the browser window (usually on the right) as well as HTTPS instead of HTTP in the address bar at the top of the page. If it is not being used, you may want to postpone that transaction.

Another aspect to secure communication is the medium being used and some are more secure than others. For example, it is not the best idea to do banking or transmit sensitive information over an unsecured wireless network or one using older

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