Steemit tells you to save your password to a text file. Seriously?!? Instead, hide it.

The first time I hacked a PC it took me about 9 minutes and a set of instructions from the internet.

All cryptocurrency is hackable, and for that matter, all passwords are hackable. Last year, the top secret clearance database for the U.S. was hacked, opening a significant portion of the U.S. population and almost everyone with U.S. security clearance to blackmail. How secure is your .txt file? The Iranian government had offline computers setup to control their nuclear material Centrifuges, but they were still hacked via USB drives brought in by unsuspecting employees. How safe is your PC or Mac with standard hardware and software or paid antiviruses used by millions of people; or worse, your phone?

Last year a webserver at my current company was hacked, over and over again. I did not sleep for three weeks (okay, that’s an exaggeration, but you get the point). It turns out we had two legacy websites out of hundreds that happen to have a particular program and a particular Windows server 2008 IIS default setting that create the vulnerability. When the two were combined, the hacker was able to upload a file and slowly take over the system. Through trials, I have become very adept at tracking down hackers. This hacker happened to be from China. The country where most of these hackers seem to work from, including China, have no laws (or unenforced laws). There is really no way for the U.S. government to stop them or enforce anti-hacking laws in these countries. In fact, in China, I personally believe they are usually state sponsored. Look it up, the Chinese government has skyscrapers full of hackers.

So, what is the burgeoning blogger to do? For most sites, I would suggest memorize your password and make them complex. There is a very simple way to do this that most people don’t know: “Every good monkey climbs ladders 376 times a day! To stay big and strong!” What does that mean? The truth is, it is a simple way to memorize this password: “Egmcl376tad!Tsbas!” It is the first letter of every word from a bizarre and simple to remember phrase. The best password is a memorized password. When I need to fix a computer and someone forgets to give me a password, the first thing I look for is a sticky note on their computer. Seniors tend to have a larger printed list of all these passwords, well-labeled for each site in their desk.

Here’s the problem: Steemit generates your password. Unless you have an eidetic memory, you probably can’t memorize a 50+ character randomly generated password. Do not have your browser save your password. Anyone who hacks into your computer gets almost free reign. Besides, they probably have access to your email now and can reset most of your other non-Steemit passwords with a forgot password email. Honestly, Steemit has one of the best password programs I have ever seen. However, Steemit has a fatal flaw. Saving your password to a document makes it super easy to find.

Many devices back up directly to the “cloud.” Think Chromebook, One Drive, Android and iPhones - all of them. The cloud is just a network of hackable servers with all kinds of information - Turbo Tax backups, social security numbers, and I imagine, a fair amount of Steemit passwords as well. Cloud servers have been hacked and they will be hacked again. Personal computers are vulnerable to hacks and so are top security government servers.

So maybe at this point you decide to print out your ridiculous password and type it in every time. Of course, then it can be key logged or found by anyone in your office. So what’s the most reasonably safe solution? Hide it.

Hiding a password is easier than you think. Just about every file on your computer can be opened with notepad or text edit. So open the picture from your last family vacation (unless, of course, you’re a famous actress – then that is prime hacker territory) and hide your password in the code. It’s super easy. Here are the PC instructions:

1. Open note pad.
2. Under file, hit open…
3. In the bottom right change “Text Documents (*.txt) to All files.
4. Select your image file – this should be a copy of your picture, not the original.
5. Paste in your password.
6. Remember where you put it.
7. Press file, save (not save as…).
8. Now your image file is saved where you had it with the password in it.

That’s it. You have now dramatically decreased the likelihood of your password getting hacked.

If you want Mac instructions, post a comment and I will add them.