EAST Lancashire residents are being warned to be more careful with their passwords following a spate of hacking attacks.

Thousands of Tesco customers had their accounts hacked using information taken from security breaches of other websites.

Jeff Orr, chief executive of IT services provider the Stack Group, said: “This is the danger, when people use the same password for all their logins, if there is one breach on one site, details can then be used to hack a person’s whole online profile, from social media sites to bank accounts, and shopping sites.”

Experts suggest using a mixture of upper and lower case letters, and numbers, for passwords.

They also advise people not to use the same password for more than one site.