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[ How can I prevent myself from being hacked? ]

This post will hopefully help you learn how to protect your account from theft and hacking and may save you from hours of despair or confusion.

♪Make sure you have a good password. A strong password can make it nearly impossible for you to be truely hacked. While any password can be hacked, it can take weeks, even months if good enough, and would take a lot of hard work. The truth is, 90% of account 'hacking' is not cracking your password, but it is always a good idea to have a good password.



Those were some really, really bad passwords. You wonder how anyone would know your password is 'california' or 'nickle'. The truth is, they don't, they may have a program test out random dictionary words, or even try and run through the whole list. Typically called 'brute forcers', these programs try hundreds of different combinations in hope of finding one that works. Ofcourse, the use of these is very unreliable and very unforthcoming, but they are something you should prepare for nonetheless. If you put an unpickable lock on your door.. but it's made out of plastic.. one good thwack or two and your door is wide open.

Here are some examples of better passwords.


Some of them may look a little silly, but adding a number to your password decreases the odds of your password being guessed dramatically. The longer and more complex your password, the harder it is to guess or crack. Even adding the same letter or number can throw people off. Just remember, no matter how complex your password, make sure you can remember it! Also, some sites or places may have case-sensative passwords. What this means that you must type the password out with correct capital and lowercase letters. So the word password as a password is not equal to PASSword or paSsWoRD. While this is a good and easy way to secure your account it may cause you problems when trying to remember it.. make sure if you write it down that you write down which letters are capital as well.

♪Make sure your email account has a good password too. It doesn't matter if your Gaia password is in all ascii.. if your email account's password is 'bubba', you're asking for trouble.

♪Keep the email address connected to Gaia as private as you can. Don't just hand out your email address to everyone. There are many places that will give you a free email account for private use.

♪Don't tell anyone your password! The leading cause of 'hacking' is people being much too trustworthy of others and giving out their personal information. Many people even give their passwords to friends they know in real life, thinking nothing could happen. I admit, my girlfriend knows my password, and I know hers. Our first year anniversary is the 10th of Febuary. Some people give their passwords to people they've known for much, much longer than that, and end up getting screwed. It's a fact. I know, you want to say 'but she or he would never do anything'.. All I can say to you is this:
Never assume something cannot happen.
There will always be someone or something there to take advantage of that.
Don't turn high hopes into a blind eye.

♪Be warey of programs running that you do not recognize. There are programs out there, such as trojans and keyloggers, that send information of yours to 3rd parties without your knowledge. Most of the time, these programs run in the background and you may never know they are even there. There are, however, ways to check for them and remove them. Always have a firewall of some sort running and always have a secure and daily-updated anti-virus program. Most of the better programs cost money but there are free programs out there that do a decent job. If you search around there are high chances you will find a program or two. I also highly suggest you use ad-ware and spy-ware scanning programs as well to root out anything your anti-virus program may miss. I have two of the best such programs listed in my article, I'm getting a lot of strange pop-ups or ads! What do I do?