Internet Hoaxes
By: Sebastian Tarleton
What are Internet Hoaxes?
A hoax is a deliberately fabricated falsehood made to masquerade as truth. It is distinguishable from errors in observation or judgment, or rumors. There are numerous chain letters, hoaxes, and other false information floating around the internet. These are not necessarily attempts to swindle you out of money, but they do waste everyone's time. Often, simply googling for the subject heading will provide sufficient information. If in doubt, you can contact SCS Facilities to confirm or disconfirm the rumor. Never, ever pass along a chain letter.
Avoiding Internet Hoaxes
Avoid duplicate passwords
If your password is discovered by a computer criminal then that’s bad enough, but the last thing you want is for that criminal to use that same password to access all of your online accounts! Criminals know that a substantial percentage of Internet users use the same password for many different online accounts so make sure they don’t get access to everything just be discovering one password. Also avoid using previous passwords that you have used.
Avoid popular passwords
Certain passwords are used more than others. Like “123456” or “password” or the name of the site with the letter 1 after it. These are often the first example criminals will use when trying to gain access to your account, so don’t let them be successful!
Avoid just words
Specific attacks such as brute force attacks have a higher chance of grabbing your password if it is just a single word. Such attacks can work their way through a long string of words until the correct one is used. Of software can compare stolen encrypted passwords to a database of words to look for matches.
Avoid personal information
Avoid using personal information about yourself in your password, such as your date of birth, name or pet names.
A strong password will…
Contain a mixture of lowercase letters, uppercase letters and numbers and is at least 8 characters long.