Jason McDonald - The Password Book: Internet Security & Passwords Made Easy

The Password Book :

Internet Security

& Passwords

Made Easy

Jason McDonald, Ph.D.

2018

Copyright 2017 Excerpti Communications, Inc.

All rights reserved.

More Than a
Password Book

Most password books are just that, mere places to write down websites and passwords. ( This book does that. )

But thats not enough! In todays rough-and-tumble Internet full of scammers, thieves, and scoundrels you need more than just a Password Book. You need:

A book that provides scam education as to what scams are out there, how scams work, and how to be mentally savvy enough to avoid being scammed.

A book that helps you inventory and upgrade the security of each key Internet asset, especially the big three of your computer, your email, and your mobile phone.

And, a book that gives you a password system so that you can easily construct hard-to-guess passwords and have a framework for three tiers of security.

Thats what this book does, so lets get started!

For Mom & Dad

Table of Contents

DISCLAIMER

This book aims to help you to protect yourself online that is, to protect your computer, tablet, email, bank account, and/or mobile phone, etc. against Internet hacks and scams. However, no security efforts are perfect, and this book offers no guarantees. By reading this book, you agree that any actions you take (or fail to take) are at your own risk . Neither Jason McDonald, the JM Internet Group nor Excerpti Communications accepts any responsibility for the effects of your actions or lack of action vis--vis any potential scams, viruses, Trojan horses, or other software or apps or any unforeseen problems of any type.

All trademarks are the property of their respective owners; any use is for illustrative purposes only. This guide is independent and has neither received nor solicited any advice or financial support from any of the vendors mentioned herein.

RESOURCE LINKS
&
BOOK REGISTRATION

This book references numerous resources or websites on the Internet using jump codes. To access a jump code, visit the website http://jmlinks.com/ in your Internet browser. Simply enter the jump code there and you will be automatically transferred to the referenced Internet website.

For example, if you see http://jmlinks.com/35w then enter 35w at http://jmlinks.com/ to access the referenced website.

Register Your Book

If you register your book, youll get a free PDF copy of the book which has easy, clickable links to all resources. To do so:

1) Visit http://jmlinks.com/pwregister

2) Enter the password: 2017pw

Let me start with a story, the anatomy of a scam perpetrated against my Mom. My Mom is a very smart woman, very involved in the community with literally hundreds of key friends and contacts in my home town of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Shes a prime target for scammers, however shes older, shes affluent, and she has many friends, family, and colleagues who are also attractive targets in their own right. She also has an AOL email account, a dead give-away that someone is not a member of the technological cognoscenti!

On the morning of November 7, 2014, I received (as did everyone on my Moms AOL email contact list), the following email, under subject: Sad News:

I really hope you get this fast. I could not inform anyone about our trip, because it was impromptu. We had to be in Philippines for a Tour. The program was successful, but our journey has turned sour. We misplaced our wallets and cell phones on our way back to the hotel after we went for sight seeing. The wallet contains all the valuables we have. Now, our luggage is in custody of the hotel management pending when we make payment.

I am sorry if I am inconveniencing you, but I have only very few people to turn to now. I will be very grateful if I can get a short term loan of ($2,450) from you. This will enable me sort our hotel bills and get my sorry self back home. I will really appreciate whatever you can afford at this moment. I promise to refund it in full as soon as I return. Please let me know if you can be of any assistance.

Thanks

Since the scammers had seized control of my Moms AOL email, if you replied to her email, you then received instructions on how to wire her and my Dad the money, or if you expressed doubt, some back-and-forth with the scammers about their problems to reassure you that it was really her. To make matters worse, the scammers not only had control of her AOL email account but had deleted her email contacts after exploiting her account, making it very difficult for us, after we regained control, to send out a legitimate email to friends and family to warn would-be victims of this heartless vacation problem scam.

Lets look at the anatomy of this scam , starting with the two steps:

1. My Mom had been phished, meaning someone had tricked her into opening an email attachment or reverifying her AOL login and password so that the scammers could take control of her email.
2. My Moms friends, family, and contacts were being spearphished, meaning the scammers were using a person that they knew ( my Mom ) to attempt to get them to do something they wanted ( wire them money ).

And lets break this down further into the constituent elements common to all scams:

The Spoof. Both, first to my Mom, and then to her contacts, the scammers were pretending to be something or someone that they were not . They were spoofing first, a trustworthy email sender and trustworthy website or attachment to which my Mom would mistakenly give her login and password, and second, doing the same thing to her contacts, pretending to be my Mom, after they had gotten control of her email.

The Confidence Game . Throughout, the scammers strove to increase the confidence of their intended victims, by emailing back people who asked questions (and in other such similar scams, even going so far as to converse on the phone). First the scammers spoof and then they build confidence .

The Keys. Your car or house has a physical key, but your email account, your mobile phone, your bank account online, your Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, have virtual keys your login , your password , and sometimes your two-step verification code . Scammers want these keys as means to an end usually, but not always, money. In my Moms case, once they had the AOL login and password, they could use those Keys to work on their real targets, her friends and family.

The Ask. Scammers may start with getting your keys but their ultimately goal is to get money. To do this, they must ask for something. In my Moms case, first they asked her to click on something in an email and then to reverify her AOL login and password, and later they asked her contacts to send money urgently to the Philippines.

At the anatomical level, all scams share these elements in common: the Spoof , the Confidence Game , the Keys , and the Ask . There are simple scams and more complex scams (See Appendix A for a list of common scams), but they all share these elements in common.

Once you understand the anatomy of a scam, you can be on the look out for its constituent elements and thereby make yourself harder to fool.

The Goals of this Book

This book has two goals:

1. To educate you as to how scams work.
2. To provide practical tips so that you can protect yourself against scams.

First, well learn a little about what scams are, how they work, and what elements can tip you off that you may be facing a scam. And, second, well identify practical todos to decrease your vulnerability to scams and scammers. Along the way, well investigate tips to improve privacy on the Internet, plus steps you can take to harden your passwords, email accounts, bank accounts, and other key assets of your digital identity.