Data Privacy Day is an annual international celebration to raise awareness and generate discussion about information privacy. Last year, both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives recognized January 28th, 2009 as National Data Privacy Day.
Intel, Microsoft, Google, AT&T, LexisNexis and The Privacy Projects are sponsoring Data Privacy Day efforts, with assistance from Intuit and Oracle.
Even if you are not responsible for privacy at the office, you are responsible for your kids. The Data Privacy Day 2010 has some great resources for Teens, Young Adults, and Parents & Kids. Take a look at the FTC’s You Are Here to see some of the problems faced by kids online. Make sure to Visit the Security Plaza to learn about protecting your privacy (online and off).
You are responsible for your own online activity. In looking at a recent data breach, “123456”, “12345”, “123456789” and password were the most common passwords. Even Twitter banned these passwords, along with 366 other obvious passwords.
A list of 32 million passwords that an unknown hacker stole last month from RockYou, a company that makes software for users of social networking sites, provided a treasure trove of information for security analysis. About 20 percent of people on the RockYou list picked from the same, relatively small pool of 5,000 passwords. Hackers could easily break into many accounts just by trying the most common passwords.
Security experts advise that a password should consist of letters, numbers and even punctuation symbols. They should be changed regularly and you should not use the same password for all your online services.
Sources:
- Imperva’s Customer password worst practices (.pdf)
- Previous post – International Data Privacy Day 2009
- If Your Password Is 123456, Just Make It HackMe by Ashlee Vance for The New York Times
- Twitter bans 370 ‘obvious’ passwords in the Telegraph
