Currenlty I use a gmail account for all my personal stuff. This includes my medical aid, all ADSL accounts, my banking, etc. There is obviously a lot of sensitive information in there. I know that gmail isn't too secure.
I don't know all the ways that gmail can be hacked, but I'm wondering what a cheap, secure alternative is? Is it more secure to get an email account from a buying a domain? I know a lot of ISP's give you free e-mail accounts when you have an ADSL subscription with them; are those more secure than gmail?.
Personally, I ONLY use GMAIL for all my personal stuff, like you, from banking, to insurance, medical aid, ADSL, Cellphone accounts, Telkom Accounts, and many other types of accounts.
I would rather trust this sensitive information flowing through Google's servers which is maintained by John and Sally and protected by US Law, then have it pass through MWEBs, or Telkom's servers that are maintained by Sipho and Trompie, and supposedly protected by South African law.
As a leading internet company, GMAIL cannot screw up it's security. It will be a bad blow to it's reputation, security and share price. I put my trust in them more than any South African company.
But still, you can't be too careful. Choose a strong, but easy to remember password for your GMAIL account. Don't use this password for any other online registration / forum / account. Keep it safe, and to yourself. For every account/registration , use a unique randomly generated password. Generate and store all your passwords in a secure password database like
Keepass Password Safe. Trust, me it's the way to go. Don't ever repeat passwords. Also, you won't ever need to remember more than 2 passwords. The password of your GMAIL account, and the master password of your secure password database. Make sure these two are different. And for God's sake, don't forget to backup your password database regularly. The password database is almost impossible to hack (would take 100s of years using the latest technology available today) without the master password. So you can even store it online. But don't lose it. And don't forget your master password, else you're screwed.
Before I used to reuse passwords. Had 4 or 5 different ones which I used for various services. I used to keep track of which password is linked to which account in a series of text files. Ever since changing to KeePass - I've never looked back, and feel at ease that my data is safe. If any one of those services are compromised, it won't compromise any other service, due to the randomly generated unique passwords. I think this is more important then worrying about whether GMAIL can be hacked or not.
Even if your GMAIL account (or any other email account) is hacked, all the attackers get access to is perhaps your GMAIL password, and your everyday emails. You other financial and sensitive information is still secured by random passwords.
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