If you knew there were burglars in your neighborhood, would you leave your doors and windows open -- or unlocked? Or might you leave your more precious things just lying around where anyone can get at it.
Chances are you wouldn't.
But computer experts say too many of us are doing something similar when it comes to protecting our email and data.
U.S. officials who looked into that massive Yahoo break-in say the Russian hackers didn't have to work hard to break into people's email accounts -- because most of us don't take basic precautions to protect our information.
For example, many users use the same password for a number of accounts. That means if the bad guys get into one of your secure accounts, they can rifle through others. Others choose weak passwords -- like their names, names of their kids or other information that can be found online.
The strongest passwords are randomly capitalized words that don't appear in a dictionary, interspersed with numbers and characters. Of course, the flip side of that -- is that such passwords can also be hard to remember.
