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You wake up in the morning and you read the news: Another major website or cloud service has been hacked. You yawn, make a cup of coffee, and then all of a sudden realize that you have an account there. Your email, photos, and personal data are now at risk. What do you do?<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, data breaches are a common occurrence. From the revelation that 500 million Yahoo user accounts were hacked<\/a>, to the illegal distribution of Jennifer Lawrence’s photos<\/a>\u00a0that had been stolen from her iCloud account, this sort of event is no longer a surprise.<\/p>\n In some cases, millions of people’s accounts are compromised at once\u2014and you may be one of the many victims. So what do you do if this happens to you? Here are eight things you should do right away.<\/p>\n The first thing you need to do right away is change your password on the service that has been hacked. This may be a single website, or, in the case of Apple’s iCloud or Google, this password may be the key that opens access to all sorts of personal data. Make sure the new password is secure<\/a>; if your previous one wasn’t, take advantage of this warning to make sure the new one is harder to crack.<\/p>\n If you were the hacking target, then you need to change passwords on all your accounts. Obviously, this doesn’t include random forums and websites where you’ve signed up for newsletters. But you need to reset your passwords for any account where you have entered financial data, or store personal data of any kind.<\/p>\n The best password is one like this: JovUCB#2yVJ6Rk&A<\/strong>. Or this: icing-3terminal-Sconce<\/strong>. But these are not easy to remember. If you use a password manager, you can create secure passwords for all your needs without having to remember them. The only password you need to recall is a single, very secure password that lets you access your password manager<\/a>.<\/p>\n There are several password managers for Mac, and my favorite is 1Password<\/a> (see also our article about how to choose the right password manager for you<\/a>). Not only does it store your passwords, credit card numbers, bank account information, and more, but it can create passwords for you when you need to set up a new account. I used 1Password to create the two passwords in the paragraph above, using two different options: random characters or words.<\/p>\n Using a password manager helps you use different passwords for different accounts. Since it can be hard to remember all the passwords you need, you may have defaulted to using something like “password123” for lots of accounts. Or you may be using a more secure password, but using it for all your accounts. Get out of that habit: With a password manager, you can create unique secure passwords for each of your accounts.<\/p>\n There are lots of password management apps and solutions out there, and for obvious reasons, it’s important to choose one from a reputable developer. If you mainly use Apple devices, or at least an iPhone, iCloud Keychain<\/a> is one free password manager that may work for you. Alternatively, you could choose one of several\u00a0popular password managers that meet high standards of quality and reliability; we’ve reviewed a few of them here<\/a>.<\/p>\n See also:<\/em><\/p>\n 4 Best Password Managers in 2024: How to choose the right one for you<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n1. Change Your\u00a0Passwords<\/h3>\n
2. Use a Password Manager<\/h3>\n
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