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This is my long but important PSA (Public Service Announcement):
PASSWORDS MATTER—make them complicated and un-remember-able. (That’s not really a word, but you get what I mean, right? If you can’t remember them, then neither can the lousy cyber criminal trying to hack your accounts to steal your identity.)
Last week I spent a delightful—not!—2.5 hours dealing with Best Buy because I received an email from them about an item that I did not buy.
Eek!
I know I didn’t buy a Hoover Power Carpet Scrubber because I don’t have any carpets AND because our Best Buy store closed up permanently during the Covid-19 closures and the nearest one is 1.5 hours away.
Turns out someone supposedly named “Karen Butigan” (this person’s identity could have been stolen so I’m only saying this is the name used) purchased the carpet scrubber for someone supposedly named “Veronica Allen” using one of the 7 different credit cards I found attached to my account. All different names from all over the country: Alameda CA, Cincinnati OH, Lancaster PA, Winterhaven FL, New Haven CT, Hollywood CA, and Westborough MA.
I FREAKED out, as you might imagine.
The Best Buy tech I was “chatting” online with said, “Well, at least, it’s not your card number.”
Ya’think?
Long story short: I changed my email and my password, but the wrong name remained on my account for some reason the tech could not explain. I, then, called the main office’s 888 line, which took another 30 minutes. Finally, I canceled my account.
(Or, rather, I tried to cancel my account. Apparently I’m still on their mailing list, which does not make me happy. I’m still working on that.)
After I hung up with Best Buy, I opened my Google account and ran a security check of all my passwords (144 by their count).
Google found:
– 6 compromised passwords (that did NOT include Best Buy). I changed them immediately.
– 30 with weak passwords. I’m tackling them next.
– 108 re-used passwords. They’re on my ToDo list.
The fun never ends around here. But, trust me, you don’t want a cyber troll to get into your accounts. EVER!
FYI: I use an app on my phone to keep track of my new, extremely complicated passwords. It’s called: 1Password. (A misnomer because nobody has just 1 password. 😉)
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