Secure Your Google Services

If your like me you live on Google. Gmail, Google Docs, YouTube, Maps, Photos, etc. I use them all and if I lost access to my Google account I would be in big trouble. How do I keep your Google services safe?

You start with a really long password with upper and lower case letters, numbers and punctuation. Go to GRC Password Haystack to see how effective this is.

Normally you would log in to your Google account using a user name (your Gmail address before the @ symbol) and your good password. This is generally effective but there are ways someone may discover your password, like looking at the note on the bottom of your keyboard. This could be a big problem because a person could now take information from your account or worse take over that account by changing your password. To prevent this you can use an additional barrier. Two-factor authentication is a second method of login which is generally more difficult to obtain. These methods include a physical key of some kind (like a UbiKey), or a program (maybe on your phone like Google Prompt or Google Authenticator ) that generates a one time password. In this way if you only have the password you only have half of what’s required to login.

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