Letters

Featured Letter: Some helpful advice to remember those passwords

password

To the editor:

We all know the pain Joe Werkmeister cites in his column last week, “We’ve gone too far on passwords.” Technology moves pretty fast these days and many of us are left clueless about how to best mitigate these issues and the unnecessary information security peril we place ourselves in.

These alternatives might be helpful (none of which I have any affiliation with besides finding them useful).

For passwords, use LastPass or OnePass password managers. You’ll only need to remember one password ever again. Never save passwords in your browser.

Use a VPN (which encrypts communications from server to server) and a proxy server, which provides some anonymity from advertisers and trackers. These are everywhere and can be free up to the cost of a subscription to The Suffolk Times for an app that does both and makes it brain-dead simple. Lastly, use browser extensions like Adblock Plus and Disconnect to further control the data we unknowingly share with the world. Some services pretend to do this but are actually run by marketers.

None of the above is over-the-top digital behavior. They should be considered basic best practices in this day and age.

At the very minimum, they should be in all of our toolkits as solutions to safe surfing.

Mark Ghuneim, Southold