News
The article is more than 13 years old

NBI advises regular password changes

Finnish police are calling on users of online services to change their passwords after nearly some 500,000 Finnish email addresses were leaked on the internet, along with 15,000 passwords. At least some of the passwords are connected to email addresses that were leaked.

Tietokoneen näppäimistö.
Image: Yle Uutisgrafiikka

The National Bureau of Investigation says passwords posted online late Saturday night appeared to be connected to a previous incident, in which the personal data of nearly 16,000 Finns were hacked into and made public.

They have already interviewed suspects in connection with the latest case. Police are trying to discover if the data were acquired by illegal means.

Data protection experts and police recommend changing passwords regularly, regardless of whether or not personal details have been leaked recently.

Erkki Mustonen of the computer security firm F-Secure says that a good password should be difficult to guess, and that swapping letters for numbers that look similar helps strengthen it.

He also recommends keeping the same password for a maximum of six months. Ideally passwords should be changed every three months.