Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Security Issues

With all of the recent hacked accounts and stolen 'lewtz' (See Here), I've been wondering what steps the gaming community takes against hacking/thieving bastards.

I've worked hard on all of my characters and loosing them or their equipment, while not earth-shattering, would really get me down. I have been using internet explorer because I usually don't care. Is Firefox more secure because it's built better or because less hackers target Firefox? Truth be known nothing is 100% secure, if you built it someone can break it down. If you they can't get in, you can't get out.

Some steps I have taken or gathered are as follows:
1.) Use Firefox with the noscript addon
2.) Watch where you click (Since I work in the IT world this is a no-brainer for me but not exactly for my wife.)
3.) Don't share your passwords (Truthfully I don't even think my wife knows my password)
4.) Don't install addons from a small-time or questionable site
5.) Don't install addons that require an .exe
6.) Virus scan regularly
7.) Have a firewall (or in my case multiple firewalls)
8.) Change your password frequently
9.) Use a mix of characters (My standard is 8-12 characters with at least one capital letter, one lower case, one special character, and one number)
10.) Don't buy gold or powerleveling services (That's a route to stealing or being banned!)
11.) Do regular PC maintenance on your machine (You'd be surprised what digging around in your hard drive can turn up)

So what steps do you take?

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