How to keep hackers from destroying your digital life

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. If you read our profile of former Disney employee Matthew Van Andel, whose life was destroyed following a single download, you might be wondering: How can I prevent this from happening to me? The bad news is that anyone who uses the internet can be hacked. That is because in the game of hacking, the bad guys can fail as many times as they like.

You’re in trouble if you slip up once. But before you trade in your computer for a Royal De Luxe, there is some good news, too. There are a few things you can do to make it harder for the hackers if they do slide into your digital life.

Van Andel had hundreds of usernames and passwords stored in a password manager, which can improve personal security as it eliminates the need to track passwords for dozens of online accounts. The problem was that he didn’t have two-factor authentication for the password manager itself. Two-factor authentication is a way of using something more than a password—a code generated by an app on your phone or sent via text message, for example—to lock up your accounts.

Not having two-factor authentication can make your life easier, but if you’re paranoid, make sure it’s turned on. Here’s how to do this for 1Password, the password manager that Van Andel used. One of the really shocking things about Van Andel’s story is the fact that after the hacker got a foothold on his personal computer, he dumped the contents of Van Andel’s password manager online.

That made the attack worse, as it allowed anyone who could see his logins and passwords to break into various accounts. Many people might not realize that a lot of passwords they use frequently already are available online, stolen in data breaches. Password managers or some