jobs

Do you use the same password for all your social media accounts — for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.?

If so, it’s a good idea to change this right now.

This is especially true if you are on LinkedIn, whether or not your LinkedIn password was one of the passwords hacked recently.

Yes, it is hard to remember so many different passwords. But you can figure out a relatively secure way of keeping all these passwords only for your own use.

Warning: Given how more and more decisions are made based on people’s online activities, you want to protect your online identity as much as possible.

If there is a breach in one major social media site, your other social media profiles will be protected if you have a different password for each profile.

Especially for high school students applying to college and young people applying for jobs:

Richard Darell shares some interesting statistics about the use of Facebook and other social media sites in the college application and job application process. See his post now.

This is why — at the beginning of each of the three books in my 3-book HOW TO SUCCEED series for teens and young adults — I include a full-page warning about putting photos and information online.

Without good password protection, even if you are personally careful about what you put online, your account can be hacked and inappropriate items can be put online in your name.

To avoid hurting your reputation:

(Strong means not your birthday or your dog’s name. It means the kind of password that you may have to look up in order to remember — a combination of letters and numbers.)

Go ahead and change your passwords now!

© 2012 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the co-founder of the online marketing company Miller Mosaic LLC.

She is also the author of fiction and nonfiction books, and her newest fiction book is CIA FALL GUY (on Kindle Select at http://amzn.to/L38eiP and free for Amazon Prime members).