According to tech guru Leo Notenboom, the number one problem reported in 2011 by the millions of visitors that seek help from his Ask Leo website was email account theft. If you believe your email account has been comprised, immediately login in and change both your password and all your security questions. To learn more about protecting your email account, read Is Changing My Password Enough?

Do you worry about strangers reading your email? Perhaps a nefarious hacker or the government? Sorry to burst your conspiracy bubble, but chances are that the email voyeur reading your email is someone you know, such as a spouse, boss or work colleague. An email privacy survey by Retrvo Blog confirms that there is a “lot of snooping and tracking going on among people who know each other.” Internet guru Bob Rankin offers his viewpoint here.

When Facebook started offering secure browsing, through the use of https://www.facebook.com they created another problem: many Facebook apps do NOT offer a secure connection option, and therefore to use them, you need to turn off SSL for the rest of your session. To better understand the implications, read this article from Simple Help.

To help you keep your Gmail account secure, Gmail lists recent sessions at the bottom of your inbox. There you can view recent account activity, and also see if your Gmail account is still logged in another session. If you do see another open session (maybe its simply your laptop?) there is a link to log out of the remote session.

Facebook users learned of a data leak earlier this month, when Symantec released details about how advertisers and other third-parties had inadvertent access to your personal information. The bottom line is that by changing your Facebook password now you can stop any additional private information from being leaked.

Contrary to the commonly offered advice to use complex passwords to ensure security, Baekdal makes a good argument for using a more easily remembered password that is still very hard to guess by using phrases with spaces or dashes between the words. He gives examples by demonstrating how long it would take to crack a password such as “ergs43″ (8 months) versus the easier-to-remember phrase “fluffy is puffy” (39,637,200 years!) To learn more, read his article on Password Security and Usability.

Because our online accounts have become so important, both Google/Gmail and Facebook now offer two-step verification for enhanced security. The basic concept in two-step security is that in addition to your username and password, whenever you login into a new machine/browser you will verify your identity with a single use verification code that is sent to your phone. For details on the Google system, read this support article. Facebook just started rolling out their two-factor authentication this week. Learn more with the Lifehacker article.

Understanding URL addresses is an important part of online security. When evaluating a link, how do you differentiate the domain name from the rest of the link? For example, does http://www.example.com/paypal.com go to PayPal.com? What about http://paypal.com:user@example.com? To learn the ins-and-outs of link security read Ask Leo’s phishing article “How do I know that this web address is safe?”.

Now that Facebook offers a secure connection to keep your data away from prying eyes when you are on a shared connection, such as the WiFi at your local favorite coffee stop, Twitter has one too. To turn it on, log into your Twitter.com account, and click on your name in the upper-right hand corner. Choose settings, then scroll down the page to the checkbox labeled “Always use HTTPS.” Check the box and click save. To see screenshots of the process, read Ask Dave Taylor.

If you ever use open Wi-Fi spots in coffee shops, hotels or airports, the easiest way to keep your account passwords safe is to use a secure (https) connection for your email and other favorite Internet hangouts, like Facebook. Although not previously available, in the last few weeks Facebook has begun rolling out a secure login option. Although it may not yet be enabled for your account, keep checking because it is coming soon. To enable secure login for your Facebook account, visit Account Settings / Account Security and check the box labeled Secure Browsing. For more detailed instructions, read Ask Leo.