These days, everything we do online, from the YouTube videos we watch to the blogs we read involves making an account on Google’s website. Our hobbies and interests chain us to the internet in a web of online accounts and passwords, most of which revolve around emails. People often link all of their accounts to […]
These days, everything we do online, from the YouTube videos we watch to the blogs we read involves making an account on Google’s website. Our hobbies and interests chain us to the internet in a web of online accounts and passwords, most of which revolve around emails. People often link all of their accounts to a single email address, trying to make things simple and easier for themselves. However, the end result is that all of their online accounts become compromised. Why? They are all dependent on the security of a single email address.
People around the world use Google Accounts to navigate the web. The most popular platform for all devices, excluding Apple products, of course, is Google, followed by Outlook and Yahoo. Gmail has over 1.5 billion registered users alone. This makes your Google account imperative since it is essential for the navigation of the web, given how influential Google is in technology today.
Chances are that you are part of the 1.5 billion crowds using a Google Account to make other accounts on the websites you regularly visit. If so, it is important that you keep changing your Google password regularly. With the rise of the internet, our smartphones, digital footprint, and other data have become an extension of ourselves. We entrust ourselves and our data to software companies with the reassurance that their pre-emptive measures will protect us. However, it is unfortunate that hackers and malicious actors roam the internet these days, looking to catch anyone unaware of the basics of internet safety and steal their data and their passwords, hoping to gain as much monetary gain as they can get.
Since we link most of our data to our Google Accounts, it is important that we protect them from malicious actors such as hackers. Hackers and malicious users can use our data. They can sell it off to advertisers, or use it for their own means, such as accessing your bank accounts, fraud purposes, or even use them to embarrass someone and defame them publicly as part of a deliberate online scandal. Hence, it is important that you keep changing your Google Password regularly.
Changing your password can benefit your online security in ways you may have previously thought impossible. For starters, if an actor has been trying to gain access to your account for a set period of time, changing your password will deal a blow to their efforts. This can hopefully enhance the safety of your Google Account.
While some hackers seize all they can by gaining access to your account once, others take subtle approaches and continue to steal your data over time to benefit themselves in the long run. By changing your password, you can ensure that your data does stays safe from a hacker of such nature.
Firstly, you need to have access to your Google Account. You may need to sign in again depending on the circumstance but either way.
1. Visit https://myaccount.google.com/ and sign in to your Google Account.
2. On the website, click on the heading labeled “Security.”
3. Under “Signing into Google,” click the password field.
4. At this stage, Google may ask you to sign in again, just for security purposes.
5. After you have verified your identity, it will ask you for your new password. You should type in your new password and then reconfirm it accordingly with Google’s requirements.
You should try choosing passwords that are long, varied, and unique in nature. The more you accomplish this, the difficult it is to guess your password or to brute-force it. Most companies recommend choosing a password of up to eight words. However, experts suggest that the more characters your password have, the better. However, the passwords should not only belong but rather, unique in nature.
If your password is “password,” it is likely that a hacker will guess it from the get-go. Hackers guess passwords by using techniques where they try the most frequently used words in a language. A long phrase, or your favorite phrase, for example, is much better than a “password.” Combining the phrase with lower- and upper-case letters, as well as signs can make your password strong and secure, and therefore, harder to guess for a hacker.
Example: “ThizI$APhr&sE” as a password is likely to be strong - at 13 characters, with two symbols and 5 Upper Case letters, the password is unique in nature and is difficult to guess. Similarly, “helloToMyDogJack” would be impossible to guess too.
If you are on an Android Phone, navigate to your device’s settings app.
1. Click on Google.
2. Manage your Google account.
3. On top of the page, click the option that reads “Security.”
4. You will see an option under “Signing into Google” called “Password.”
5. After signing into your Google Account, you will need to tap “Change Password.”
On your Apple device, open the Gmail Application. You will see a profile picture displayed on the top right corner of your screen. Tap your profile picture or click it. Click on the pop-up option Manage your Google Account.
If, you do not use Gmail, visit https://myaccount.google.com/ and follow the instructions we gave above for computer users. This is because without the Gmail application, there is no Google service on your phone that you can use to change your password.
After changing your password, Google will sing you out from everywhere except the devices you use to verify your identity, third party applications with access and home devices that have access to your google account. If you see yourself signed out of all of your regularly visited websites, do not panic! Simply log in with your new password and you can resume using your Google Account as usual.
Nowadays, everything connects to each other through the internet. This interconnectivity is what makes the internet the beautiful place it is, full of memes, ideas, and information beyond our comprehension. This beauty, however, comes at a cost - privacy. The internet has morphed into a plethora of security challenges due to the nature of its interconnectivity. With hackers online looking to grab your information at every available opportunity, and companies using your data and browsing history to sell it to advertisers, the internet has become a goldmine for data collection. That data includes everything you do on the internet, including your location, your regular websites, the most frequently bought products, and your browsing habits.
A VPN stands for Virtual Private Network. It is a remote server that you connect to before you connect to the rest of the world. All of your internet traffic then proceeds to come and go through that server. It serves as a different pathway for your internet signals to take as compared to your standard internet connection.
Whenever we use the internet, we send and receive tiny bits called data packages, we use them to navigate the internet. Whenever we watch a YouTube video, we send and receive data from our devices in order to do so. These data packages are usually susceptible to not only hacks but also Man-In-The-Middle attacks, and various other cybercrimes.
When you are using a Turbo VPN, you can make sure that your data packages use encryption. Meaning that your data packages become gibberish and in order to decode them, hackers need a special password called an encryption key.
Turbo VPN encrypts these data packages, which means that no outsider, whether they are a company like your ISP or a hacker, can understand what you are using, apart from the fact that you subscribed to a VPN service. This can ensure that your data remains secure, no matter the cost.
Please note that by logging into your browser or a website, you are making this anonymity only partial. Companies can link the traffic to your account and still collect your browsing habits that way. The only way to protect yourself from data collection by Google, while using their services, is to never provide them with any personally identifiable information at all. Unfortunately, that is easier said than done because you are unable to create a Google account in the first place if you do not provide a contact number or a backup email address.
A VPN service like Turbo VPN can ensure that your data and hence your accounts remain safe. If you are serious about online safety, do consider subscribing to a VPN service. By using a VPN, you can stay safe on all networks, whether insecure or secured public Wi-Fi. That means that you will never need to worry about hackers tracking your keyboard input or using internet signals to track your data in order to use that to hack you. You may also learn more about how to protect your data and device.
