How to Prevent Your Passwords From Getting Hacked

Hyderabad: Cyber security experts advise that using special characters when creating passwords might keep you secure from cyber attacks by cybercriminals attempting to hack them.

A Kukatpally driver who sought to make his ATM card and other e-wallets' four-digit PIN (personal identification number) as simple as possible by using the password 1234 recently lost Rs 1.30 lakh to cybercriminals. This occurred when his phone was snatched at a market by unknown individuals. The phone contained Paytm and Google Pay applications, as well as other e-wallets, all of which were linked to his bank account and had the same password.

The individual who flicked the phone to figure out the password made a random guess, upon which he made transactions worth Rs1.30 lakh, including gold. Using the Kukatpally incident as an example, cybercrime police authorities warn that using simple passwords or phone numbers as passwords might be dangerous since they can be easily guessed and hacked.

According to the authorities, many people use their mobile phone number's digits or a string of numbers like 1234 or 0000 as their password. Hackers can obtain phone numbers via accessing social media accounts or by guessing passwords.

"It becomes a simple task for hackers to access your e-Wallets or ATM using this simple technique which we observed is being used by a majority of citizens and social media users. Thus, they can easily access contact details, private photos, or other content of people," officials warned, adding that more than 60% of users use their phone numbers as usernames or passwords for their accounts.

Due to hackers' use of such approaches to get easy access to personal information and then use that information to blackmail individuals, authorities are urging people to use strong passwords that include special characters and a combination of letters, characters, and digits.

"Every user should keep a strong password with two-factor authentication, instead of a simple one which can easily be cracked by cybercriminals," the official said.

The officials also recommended that all devices be encrypted and that firmware be updated regularly to keep up with new security features.