Very early on here on StarterTech, we told you How To Pick A Password, and with recent events in the upcoming elections, we have a real world lesson about why choosing a strong password is so important.

With the story of vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s email account being reportedly hacked, some information about how it was said to of been done, and it teaches everyone some valuable lessons.  According to Valleywag, the person who hacked the account is said to have used the password recovery system by using some very simple searches of the Web to find the needed information.

On systems that offer password recoveries that ask you things like a security question, always write your own question if you can, if you can’t, reverse the answer if you can.  A popular security question is “What was your high school mascot?”  Well, lets say yours was “Bears”, how about entering your answer as “Sreab”?  What about “earsb”?  Find a system that works for you and stick to it, but you have to remember that a lot of people who may try to hack your account are co-workers, friends and family, all people that may very well know the answers to the most common questions, so you need to exercise caution with your security questions as much as you do with your passwords.

This is an unfortunate reality of the modern Internet world, but you have to safeguard everything as much as you can.  Always think of the worst case scenario and then make it even worse.