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If I went out and asked 10 Illinois real estate agents, “What is the #1 threat to your online security right now?” I would likely get 10 different answers. Honestly, most real estate agents don’t take online security seriously unless some hacker is using their stolen credit card numbers to buy a new laptop. Without a doubt, the number one threat to our online security is this: re-using passwords.

I know it doesn’t sound like that big of a deal and I know 99% of us do it. What I’m talking about is using the same password for our e-mail accounts, online banking, MLS, Amazon, Paypal, our favorite chat forums and 20 other websites. Honestly, how many of us use a unique password for every online site that requires a password? Anyone? I highly doubt it. Here’s another question: for those of us that use multiple passwords, how many keep these all written down somewhere like in a text file on their desktop or in a wallet? There are obviously several concerns here but I want to tackle the biggest one today – that being the re-use of passwords.

Here’s a not-so-farfetched real world example: Susan is a well-respected real estate agent in California. She has a savings account, a checking account and 2 high-limit credit cards. Susan also is a big fan of a football team. Susan hears of a new website that, after signing up, will allow her to track player stats on a game-by-game basis for every member of her team. Susan checks out the website but finds out that it’s a disappointment. 3 months later, Susan starts to see fradulent charges appear on both of her credit cards and a check of her bank accounts reveals several unauthorized wire transfers out of the country. Sounds pretty realistic, doesn’t it? The sad fact is, this sort of thing is happening every day online. It’s a thief’s playground out there – no, this isn’t paranoia, it’s reality. The good news is, most of this can be prevented with some careful and detailed security measures.

Let’s take a look at Susan’s situation and where things went wrong. Like 99% of us, Susan uses the same password for everything – even when registering on new websites. What Susan didn’t know is that the football website she registered on wasn’t built to provide information about a football team – it was created to steal user names and passwords. Shortly after Susan registered on the website, the owners began to use her user name and password combo on the major financial and e-mail websites. Since Susan used the same combination for her credit cards, bank accounts and website registrations, it wasn’t long until several matches were found and Susan’s headaches began.

Most of this could have been easily avoided if Susan would have taken some security precautions. They are easy to implement but must be followed 100% of the time without fail. Here are my top 5 security measures that will help protect you online:

1. You must use multiple passwords. I’m not suggesting that you use a different password for everything. Just everything that you don’t mind getting hacked. You absolutely need to have unique passwords for all of your online banking accounts, credit cards, Paypal and Amazon accounts and anything else that deals with money or sensitive information like your e-mail account. You then should create 2 or 3 additional passwords – one of these you should designate as a high-security common password that you will use for more sensitive websites and that you only use for trusted, established websites and at least one other password that is a low-security password that you can use for registering on sites that you are not familiar with.

2. For the most important user names and passwords, create a text file on your desktop and begin typing random letters, numbers and symbols. Type a good 2 or 3 lines of this and then at a place where you can find it again, type your password. Finish up by typing out an additional 2-5 lines of random text and then save the file. Now, every time you need to use this password, open the file, highlight your password, right click and select “copy”, select the password field and right click and select “paste” – you’ve now done a pretty good job at defeating a keylogger.

3. Avoid questionable websites and if you’re not sure, register with a different user name and your low-security password. Also, never detach and view files you receive in your email unless they are 100% expected and from a 100% reliable source. Finally, don’t click on links in e-mail to take you to websites. Open a browser and type out the address by hand. It’s too easy to mask links in an e-mail and the last thing you want is to take an unexpected trip to a malicious website.

4. Keep an anti-virus program running and up-to-date at all times. Just remember – an anti-virus program isn’t 100% effective at keeping you safe from keyloggers looking to steal your information so just because you have a big commercial anti-virus suite installed, don’t consider yourself safe. Also, never store your passwords in electronic format anywhere, ever. If you need someplace to write them, make sure wherever you write them is in a secure location – not your wallet (that can be stolen).

5. Never use public computers to log on to anything. It’s way to easy for someone to install a keylogger on a public computer and you don’t know what kind of security that system has. If you absolutely need to log into something from a public computer, follow my instructions in #2 above for an example of how to help protect yourself from keyloggers.

If you follow these steps, you’re going to keep yourself and all of your logins secure from hackers. I’m sure we’ve all had to go through the pain of cancelling a lost or compromised credit card – just imagine how it would be to have to cancel everything or re-configure all of your logins because you re-used the same password for everything.