Vicki Sauter, professor of information systems at UMSL, discusses cyber safety.

A new survey has discovered that three out of every 10 American teenagers and young adults say they have had their Facebook, Twitter or MySpace accounts hacked. And the crime is done by people they know.

The poll, conducted by the Associated Press and MTV, surveyed more than 1,300 people between the ages of 14 and 24 about their experiences online.

Vicki Sauter, professor of information system at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, was interviewed by KMOV (Channel 4) about the survey and offers up suggestions for keeping your password safe. The story aired Oct. 9, 2011.

Sauter said it’s always a good time to think about protecting your passwords and online security, especially this month during National Cyber Security Awareness Month.

“You should stay away from ‘knowable’ information such as relative’s names, birth or wedding dates or pets’ names,” she said. “It is better not to have a real word. You can combine upper case and lower case letters to create a password that is harder to crack.”

“Of course, this makes it hard to remember,” Sauter added. “So, try substituting numbers or special characters into words, like h-e-1-1-0 for hello. Or use phrases that might be easy to remember for you, adding numbers and special characters. And, of course, vary your passwords among accounts.”