Ultimate Security Guide - Protect against hackers!

[Zikama]

Hello everyone, and thanks for stepping by!

I've decided to make a guide on how to keep your security at the very top all the time.

I got inspired to make this, as I've been seeing more and more people getting hacked, keylogged and scammed (possibly due to lack of good security).

 

I hope if you care about your security, you'll take the time tor read my guide, and hopefully you've learned something by the end of this.

 

I've always tried to follow the best examples of good security, which has also lead to the fact that I've never been compromised.

 

*I'm in no way affiliated with Lastpass, or any other company I recommend throughout this tutorial.

 

Chapter 1 - The ultimate password

Altho, it should be common sense for most people these days, that a simple passwords such as "Yourname123" isn't good enough. Passwords like these can be cracked in manor of minutes.

 

So what's the best way to create a very strong and hard-breakable password?

Well, a good strong password should be at least 16 characters long, this may sound like a lot to some people, but actually this is what I would consider as the minimal standard as of today. Also 98% of all Internet websites that required a login or password, will support at least a 16 charters long password to protect your account, so use it!

 

In order for your passwords to qualify as a 'strong' password, it must contain a good mix of:

• Alphanumeric characters (both upper- and lowercase!)
  
• Numbers (0-9)
  
• Special characters (!$%@#)
  

- A random password is strong password, this may sound stupid, but a password with zero pattern creations is often the best to use.

 

An example of a good random password could be; "9jYT#w%qr52tB456". This is a VERY secure and basically unbreakable password. Altho this is almost impossible for a normal human to rememberer this, every time it's needed, luckily there's a way around this, we'll get to see this in chapter 2.

 

If you don't want a random password, you should make sure to at least follow the criteria mentioned above. Do not create your password based on easily guessable information such as:

• Your first & last name.
  
•  Your birthday.
  
• Any names related to you: (Pets, family, friends etc.)
  
• Anything you share with anybody else.
  
• Things people know you love/like.
  
• Your social security number.
  
• Anything you use on any other site (Forum, social media, Skype etc.)
  
• Any easy guessable number combination (like '123456' or '987654321')
  

For a better understanding on how to create a password, which is easy for you to remember, but difficult for others to guess, I can recommend watching this video.

 

 

Chapter 2 - Getting a password manager

 

A password manager is a very useful tool, that will make your life both easier and safer for sure!

- There's many different to choose from, but be careful and read the things with small print!

 

I can recommend Lastpass, which is what I myself use for daily logins.

So what is Lastpass, you may ask. Well to make it understandable and short; it's a service that helps you keep all of your logins safely stored in a private 'zero knowledge' environment.

 

How many of you possibly have all of your logins and passwords stored locally on your PC in plain text?

- Well probably a whole bunch, because if you're one of those that have your browser store/remember your passwords/logins, you may be surprised how unsafe and easy that is to steal.

 

I strongly advice anyone who stills has their passwords stored locally in their browser to transfer them over to something more secure, such as Lastpass. Actually first time you setup Lastpass, it will asks you if you want to transfer all of your saved passwords (From IE, Firefox & Chrome) into your Lastpass vault instead.

If you choose to do this, once it's transfered, Lastpass will remove any existing passwords stored in your browser, in order to protect you better.

 

Lastpass is very easy to use, and very user-friendly. You just sign up with your email, and choose a master password, this is used to access all of your stored passwords, so make sure to create a strong one!

One of the good things about using Lastpass is, that it'll automatically log you in, if you desire, you don't have to type anything! That also means now you can have extremely complex and strong passwords, made completely random, without worrying to forget them, because Lastpass does the hard job for you.

You have the option to add a 2-step-authendiation onto your Lastpass master password, and I strongly recommend you to do so, it supports a variety of services, such as Google authenticator, which is on of  the  most known.

 

Please note that you do not have to pay anything in order to use Lastpass, only if you wish to have your passwords with you on mobile devices you can chose to pay for the premium service for $12/year. You can use it complete free of charge on PC's, which is what I do.

 

I myself, uses a random generated password across all sites I care about. If you want to be a security master, and do as I, go and change all of your passwords to something randomly generated. This will make you 10000x more secure.

 

If you do not wish to have a randomly generated passwords, or don't like the idea of a Password vault, at least do yourself that favor and check the strength of your passwords here.

 

 

Chapter 3 - Generate your passwords!

 

If you choose to use a password vault like Lastpass, you should really consider changing all of your previews passwords to something randomly generated.

 

You can use their own and very good password generator.

 

You can customize the generated password to fir your needs, for example choose the length of it, if it should contain upper-/lowercase letters, numbers or special characters.

 

A preview of the password generator.

 

With this method, you can easily MAX out your password, without any worries!

 

It's always a good idea to Google around to figure out the maximum length of passwords for your desired site you wish to protect better. I obviously can't list them all, so Google is your best shot.

 

But here are some I assume most of you have:

OSBot - Currently supports 32 character passwords.

Facebook: Tested with 100 characters, might support more.

WIndows Live/Hotmail: Only 16 (Seriously Microsoft?!)

Ebay: Up to 20 Characters.

Paypal: Up to 20 characters (Pretty disappointing)

Apple/Icloud: Up to 32 characters.

Skype: Up to 20 characters.

(More to come; request a site, and I will figure out!)

 

This video by LinusTechTips may also be worth to watch!

 

 

 

Chapter 4 - Keep your system secure

 

- Even though a very strong and complex password can do a lot, it can't stand alone on the fight against hackers. Therefore it's also very important to have solid anti-virus/spyware/malware applications installed, in order to make sure no keyloggers sneak by, if you accidentally downloads a malarious file from the web. Because what's a strong password, if a hackers or keylogger can just access your system and steal it and then copy/paste it. Then a 60 characters password won't do much.

 

Even though I believe most of you out there already have (Some) kind of anti-virus installed, never or less, it's always good to be critical and compare the quality of each and individual application, because it's a jungle with so many choices, both paid and free.

 

To be honest it's really up to you, what you prefer to use, because everyone have their favorites (at least I do). So therefore just make sure you have at least one of the following to protect and enhance your system security:

• An anti-virus program.
  
• An anti-malware program.
  

- Don't think you're complete safe with either or, you need both, because virus and malware isn't the same thing at all. This video explains it pretty well, so watch this if your curious to know the difference!

 

What do I use?

From many years of past experience I've tried a whole bunch of different choices, some better than others.

But as of now, I currently use Avast Premiere (Anti-virus) & Malwarebytes (Anti-malware).

Both applications comes in a free and a paid version, and if you're not looking to pay anything, these are still very solid choices for the free versions!

 

Keeping your databases and applications up-to-date is crusial to make sure you're not getting hacked/keylogged!

 

Make sure to scan your entire system at least twice a week. This might sound like a lot to some, but really that's just to ensure you haven't gotten anything malarious onto your system for the time being. Also most newer anti-virus/malware applications today can be set to automatically do scans for you, so you don't have to remember. Make sure to select all of your HDD's when scanning and also any external drives, which always connected to your system.

 

Chapter 5 - The ending

 

This is it, if you're followed all my steps above, you should now be much more secure than you were before! If you already knew all of this, then congratulations, you're one of those that have proven to care about your own security!

 

I really hope you've managed to establish a better secure environment by reading this, and by this, you will most likely be the one the hackers goes around, because you're simply too strong secured and too time-consuming to attempt to hack/keylog!

 

I really hope you've learned something from this guide, and if so, please feel free to spread the word! I would also appreciate a like on this post, if found it helpful, at it took quite some time to write.

 

 

 

 

Edited November 7, 2015 by Zikama

[Acerd]

nice well done

[Anne]

Great job.

[Vilius]

Very good and well written guide, will definitely help someone out!

[rvdxrklvn]

Good job!!

[SpiritualAbyss]

is there an english version of the "avast" website ?

[eylst]

Very good info for anyone to read thanks for the post man!