Ask Leo! #407 – Do you need a Windows Password? Learning Linux, archiving newsletters, disposable email addresses and more…

I have nothing on my machine that is personal, revealing, or that I would be particularly concerned for anyone else knowing. Is there a valid, serious reason to use a password? My machine is live and open to the internet 24/7. Am I putting myself or my data in any jeopardy?

Jim Hand writes:

I use PayPal and have for about 12 years and never had a problem. Ever. As more and more places accept PayPal it becomes more convenient. They don't give your card number to the vendor. They reimburse themselves either from the card you provide them or from a bank account you set-up to provide funds.

I do regularly get phishing emails telling me something has been added to or done with my PayPal account and it wants me to log in to approve or disapprove it or change something. I NEVER click a link I get in an email no matter what it's for. I ALWAYS open a web browser, enter the site into the address bar and log in the long way.

I have a couple tricks for that such as I use one of the 7 emails my ISP gives me exclusively for banking and financial related activities. That's all I use it for. I use another for bill pay. Another is for forums and social things. There's my 'professional' address, my shopping email, and my casual correspondence one. When I get a phishing email and it's not sent to that financial only email address, I know immediately it's bogus. If I get SPAM I know by the address where it's likely coming from.

I also use RoboForm for my password manager and it's very secure and IMHO the best password manager on the market. I use both the RoboForm2Go and the regular RoboForm on my home PC. The portable version, RoboForm2Go is installed on a flash drive. When I use it on another computer it starts up and when I'm done and close it, it cleans all traces of itself leaving nothing behind. Since it automatically fills in user names and passwords, there is no typing those in so a key logger is useless, even the hardware kind that connect between a keyboard and the plug on the computer. I have my flash drive's contents locked and encrypted and my file with my passwords are also in a locked folder on the drive. RoboForm added an online version called Roboform Everywhere or something like that but it is a yearly subscription.

Remember, when you use a credit card at any establishment where you hand it to somebody and it leaves your sight you are at risk. A friend had his card number stolen on a trip to Vegas. The only place he used it was at his hotel. A local restaurant has a waitress who was copying down numbers when she'd take the cards in her little black bill folder to the back to run them. A local liquor store used to make employees put a piece of paper over a credit card and rub it with a pencil to take an impression that was stapled to the register receipt. After they did the books they threw them in the trash which ended up in a dumpster out back. My card number was stolen that way and I didn't know until CDW called because my $6,000.00 worth of computers and components ordered against the card was on hold because the expiration date on the card that was used was wrong.

The point is that it may not be you but who you do business with.

Kara writes:

Hi Everyone!

I actually submitted this question and I'm so thankful for the response! It took me a while to get the adapter I needed (shipping error... long story!), but I finally received it, pulled out the hard drive and hooked it up to my machine. It worked like a charm! All the pictures and other important documents have been removed, copied to a Seagate external drive and handed over to my cousins (my aunt's daughters).

We are so thrilled to get these pictures off of this machine! Thank you so much to Leo for answering my question and for the great discussion that resulted.

Kara

Kevin writes:

Interesting article Leo In my particular case I remember using Messenger to 2 people 4 or more years ago. As I found it quite childish and have since stopped using it and have used only Skype which I rather like !. Have just checked my laptop and found that Messenger is not currently installed. However I cannot remember exactly what I did with it at the time, although probably did delete. Do remember what E-mail address I used then but as to passwords (If required ?), have not a clue. Question : As it now looks to me that from very soon, I am going to have messenger whether I want to or not, and further that I might have to log into Skye through my Microsoft Account, will I have to set up a new Messenger account or will the old one still be hovering somewhere in the background ??. Or best of all can I just continue on with Skype and ignore the change ??

Mark J writes:

I know the Facebook login is legitimate and I've used it on a few sites that I know and trust, but sometimes there's a site I don't know so well. There's a chance that they could offer you to log on through Facebook and send you to a Phishing web site which looks like Facebook and steal your Facebook login.

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