http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/24/technology/personaltech/take-extra-steps-to-keep-your-personal-information-secure.html 2016-09-23 20:01:06 Take Extra Steps to Keep Your Personal Information Secure Some websites may seem less important to protect than others, but even the most mundane accounts may reveal information about you. === Q. A. Two-step verification (also called two-factor authentication) requires an additional one-time code along with your typed password. It can stop a lot of basic theft and should be used wherever it is available if you want to keep the account secure. It may seem like a hassle, but an extra minute of logging in is quicker than hours on the phone with customer service if your plain old password is compromised. Amazon Even if you feel like your mail is mostly spam or unimportant messages, things like receipts from online purchases, your address book and personal messages could give a hacker valuable information to use for impersonating you to unsuspecting friends or institutions, especially through Quick passwords created for websites you use once or rarely are probably less important to secure. However, if you use the same password across multiple sites and someone grabs it from a site with weaker security, your other accounts that use the same password could be at risk. If you find it tedious to create (and remember) passwords for all the sites you use, an inexpensive password-manager program like