The internet users are getting subjected to security breaches every moment they are online as suggested by a number of surveys conducted at a global level. May it be credentials like mail ids and passwords to bank account details, hackers all across the web trying to get access to user data. However, the methods that these hackers put into use for getting the data from the users has been one of the most speculated topics worldwide. Putting an end to all these discussions, a research team from Google has come up with all the conclusions pertaining to the steps that hackers take to get access to the user data.
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SOME FACTS AND FIGURES
A research team from Google collaborated with the cybersecurity experts from the university of California, Berkeley to scrutinize the activities of these online miscreants. After about 1 year of research, they have now finally come out with the results which put light on one major fact that most of these passwords are obtained by the hackers in two ways. Email phishing, which has been enlisted as one of the major ways account for about 12 million credential thefts in the 2016-2017 period while the third-part breaches account for about 3.3 billion credential thefts of the users in the same time period.
The Google passwords of the users form an integral portion of these credential thefts since these hold the key to a user’s mail, Documents, photographs, drive and much more. Password no longer live up to the expectations which are evident from the fact that about 15 percent of the total account holders complain of a security breach in their accounts.
This urgently calls for some drastic measures that need to be taken so as to secure the accounts. People now no longer trust passwords as the only key to their accounts.
THE REMEDY
Users might have often overlooked the warnings to use different passwords on different sites which might be one of the primary reasons that their security got breached. If any user is giving a single password for all the accounts on different sites, he is indirectly giving access to his whole kingdom to the hackers. Hence the users must use different passwords for different sites and get their phone numbers linked to each account. If it is hard to remember, they can also make use of password managers for the purpose. Google employs its own security systems like the Google Security check up to secure all the user accounts.
The users can also double up their passwords with some biometric data like fingerprint or face id which can be used to gain access to the accounts. Since most of the devices these days come with these security measures, linking accounts with biometric information can be both convenient and safe too.
CONCLUSION
The above-mentioned facts and figures discovered by the investigation team comprise of only those cases that were free to be found online. In fact, these numbers can be much higher than what is revealed. Drastic measures need to be first taken at the user level to ensure a strong security for their accounts. Several sites also have been updating their security features that would prevent the hackers from their attempts to steal data.
