You might think your password is safe, but in the last year alone, security experts said there were more than one billion hacking attempts.
Chris Autry's Yahoo account was hacked five times in six weeks.
"You have to do some damage control. You have to call friends and say, 'Hey man. I'm sorry you got this,'" Autry said.
The hackers bombarded his contacts with spam and even pornography.
"It was highly offensive," he said.
What makes it even worse, Autry is a Baptist minister.
Rick Wallace, a cybersecurity expert, said he has helped thousands of victims like Chris restore their reputations and their credit.
He said the most common mistake is using the same password for multiple accounts. Hackers can get in through the weakest link with the least security.
"Once you get into their social networking website, you can pop right onto their banking website and continue on," Wallace said.
It takes only 10 minutes for a hacker's computer to crack a six-character lowercase password, but it takes 10 hours if it's upper and lower case. Add more digits and special characters and it becomes infinitely more difficult. Yet most of us use simple combos that are easy to remember.
"I can find out your dog's name. I can find out where you were born. I can find out your date of birth," Wallace said.
Instead, experts recommend using upper and lower case letters along with numbers and punctuation; the longer the better. Stay away from names, places, colors or dates and change your passwords every 30 to 60 days.
Wallace also told NEWS9 to be creative with those security questions, even giving fake answers that no one can find online.
"For example, where were you born? Instead of where you were born, because I can find out where you were born, instead of using that answer, how about using your favorite city?" he said.
As for Autry, he said he's fortunate the hackers didn't ruin him financially. He's since closed his Yahoo account, and has opened a new one with another provider. This time his password is much stronger.
"Now we've just encrypted it even more, so hopefully it will stick," he said.
Experts said the ultimate password protection uses something only you have like your fingerprint or iris scans, but those are only used for the most secure systems.
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