Data leaks

With a number of high-profile data leaks affecting household name companies in recent months, tech expert David McClelland offers this advice to keep your personal information safe.

• Make sure you use a unique password for each of your online accounts, because if a hacker gets access to one password in a data leak, they may try it on other accounts.
• Since hacked email passwords are often a gateway to gathering information about other accounts, as well as our lives off-line, make sure your email password is unique and hard to guess.
• Never use easy-to-guess passwords.
• Set up two-factor authentication – this provides a crucial extra layer of security to protect online accounts in the event of a password leak. We’ve got further information on how to do that here.