Hackers are smart, but they're also somewhat lazy. So unless you happen to be a high-profile target, a hacker will likely give up if your data defenses prove to be too difficult to breach. Mat Honan's hackers even admitted that their attack was nothing personalthey simply wanted to break into his Twitter account because the three-character handle "@mat" signified the property of a Twitter superuser. Nothing more, and nothing less.

Ultimately, even taking small security steps, such as creating an eight-character password instead of a five-character password, can protect your personal information just well enough to convince hackers to move on to the next digital door.