Change your LinkedIn password immediately!

Yesterday evening, I was reading a blog post from Zdnet regarding the LinkedIn potential password threat and stupidly just tweeted about it... but I should have taken contingency action by immediately changing mine!

This morning, I logged into LinkedIn and the following message was displayed on my LinkedIn homepage... thanks guys for screwing up my password.... anyway, thanks for reminding me that when I read a security threat about a service I use, I should immediately react and take appropriate steps to secure my data privacy.

One thing I have been doing for a long time and recommend to all of you, is using different passwords for all, yes, I mean all, the services you use. Nevertheless, the risk is that you start to write down all different passwords and if one day, someone get access to it, he will get access to all at the same time. Of course, you can use several solutions which should encrypt and keep secure your passwords in one  place, but my approach is slightly different!

I have prepare some kind of rule/algorithm (not written anywhere, except in my mind), which I use every time and every where I need a new password. Providing me all the time different passwords easy to remember, but difficult to guess. Last but least, if I forget it, I can get back to my rule/algorithm and regenerate it without any problem!

Of course, I am not going to explain how I have prepared my rule/algorithm, so think about yours, try to be creative and chose something you can easily remember to generate/calculate your passwords in case you have a bad memory. Be careful, not only letters or numbers, but rather a combination of letters, numbers and symbols!

Call me schizophrenic if you want, but today, I know that even if I have been a bit lazy not to change my LinkedIn password yesterday, hackers wouldn't get much more out of it by now!

More about this security threat at LinkedIn.