How to keep your online accounts secure
About this video
Sal asks Guemmy Kim from Google why account security matters. She compares online accounts to a house that holds your personal information and explains that if someone breaks into a key account like Gmail, they can use it to get into your bank, social media and shopping accounts too.
You'll be able to
- explain why account security affects me every day.
- describe what an attacker could do with a compromised account.
- explain why an email account is a 'key' to other accounts.
Key words
- Account security
- Keeping your online accounts protected so only you can get in.
- Compromise
- When someone who shouldn't have access breaks into your account.
- Personal information
- Private things about you, like your photos, messages and details stored in your accounts.
Transcript
- Hi everyone, Sal Khan here, and I'm here with Guemmy Kim, who's a director of product management at Google in account security. And my question for you, Guemmy is everyone's always talking about account security. Why should I or the folks watching care?
- Yes. So it sounds like a technical term, but it's actually something that affects us every day. Think of all of the online accounts that you use, whether that's your bank or Google or any other service. Well, any of those accounts actually hold all of your personal information, and like a house, you want it to protect that personal information that you care about.
There's always gonna be things like bugs, and rats, and thieves that try to come in. And so you wanna make sure that they don't.
- And what's gonna happen, like, if somehow someone gets into my account, what's the worst that they can do?
- Well, I mean, just taking a Google account for example, like, not only can they take your personal information like your photos, or information you're sending in Gmail, you know, they could also get access to all of your other online accounts. As you know, you know, your Gmail account is actually a key to getting into your bank, your social media accounts, your eCommerce, because once you compromise, for example, the Gmail account then I can get into all of those other accounts as well.
- Yeah, people can steal money from you, they can misrepresent you, they can see all your private information,
- Right. Exactly. It can get to be pretty scary. So I think this is something people should pay attention to.
- Mhm.
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