Tech Talk at ShieldsGroup

I had all but stopped using Yahoo mail since, in my estimation, they didn’t take security as seriously as Gmail, but in recent months, Yahoo’s offered better protection than in the past.

If you’re concerned about security and using Yahoo for email, here’s five steps to making your Yahoo mail more secure.

1. Turn on SSL (secure socket layers) in Yahoo. This encrypts ALL mail in and out of yahoo, something they should have done years ago, but just initiated under pressure from security experts. You can see how to do this at http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/01/08/yahoo-mail-https-ssl/
2. Turn on Two-step verification logins on Yahoo. You can read about that here: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Yahoo-Introduces-Secure-Two-Step-Verification-Logins-239586.shtml (See the note at the end of this list.)
3. Use passwords that are sophisticated. You might use nonsense phrases that have meaning to you with misspelled words and numbers. Then you can easily remember them.
4. Keep your software updated: Java, your browser, MS Office, etc.
5. Also, be sure you have commercial grade antivirus on your PCs. You should use antivirus even if you’re using a Mac. The Java exploit that’s been trashing machines over the past few weeks didn’t care what machine you were running.

Two-step verification may seem laborious, but it’s worth the trouble as it makes it very hard for others to access your email. However, on a machine that has a key-logger (a form of malware), if you use the “Answer your secret question” option, you’re still giving away access to your account. Instead, I always have Yahoo text my phone and enter the code they text.

I still feel Gmail is more secure in that it has actually caught compromises and prevented me from sending messages that I didn’t compose — locking the account until I could resecure it.

However, if you prefer Yahoo, these five steps should help secure your email.

Never use the same password for all your accounts. That’s data-security 101. Ha! It’s not even 101. It’s kindergarten level.  I use loads of passwords for different accounts without using a formula to help me remember them. How am I to keep them all straight?

At first I used Password + from DataViz. It was a great little application that I kept on my Sony Clie. However, when I moved to the Windows Mobile world, I needed something to run on that OS. Enter KeePass. Keepass is an excellent little program that runs on a variety of platforms.

Today, I installed it on my Droid.

It is great to have all my passwords on my person whenever I need them.

Now — If I can just remember that master password….

🙂