The single most important thing you can do to protect yourself online is to have a secure password.
NEVER tell anyone else your password.
NEVER write it down for others to see.
NEVER send it in the text of an email.
If anyone else discovers your password, reset it immediately.
You can reset your university password.
Add a backup email address
Always add a backup email. This should be a personal email address that you trust. Only you should have access to it.
A backup email is an email address used to verify your identity.
In the University, you can add a personal email address by logging into Pegasus, and updating your personal details.
For staff, this can be done by going to the Human Resources tab, and clicking on My Personal Details.
For students, this can be done by going to the Personal tab, and clicking on Maintain personal details.
If you're unable to log into Pegasus to add a backup email, you can email for assistance:
- staff can contact Human Resources at operationalsupporthr@strath.ac.uk
- students can contact Student Business, see the Student Lifecycle contact us page for details
Password manager software
The biggest problem with passwords is trying to remember them all.
Some good advice is to use different passwords for each account and to make each password long and complex, but the worst password to have is a password you can't remember. So what is the answer?
Password manager software remembers your passwords so you don't have to. You can have a unique and complex password for every single account you have, and the password manager will remember it for you. You only need to remember one password - the one for the password manager.
Popular free password managers include iCloud Keychain, Google's password manager, and bitwarden.
Find out more information about password managers.
Set up Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
Another way to protect your accounts is to set up Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). This means you have to approve a login to your account using an app on your mobile phone. Even if someone does get your password, and tries to log in to your account, you can deny them access.