From Admin Patrick's guide on the Pokemon Vortex Forums
Keeping your account safe, here on Pokémon Vortex should be your number one priority as helping you do so is ours.
We can only help you so far before it becomes your own responsibility.
Follow the steps in this guide to ensure your account remains just that - YOUR account.
First of all, I suggest checking through Tyheamma's anti-scam guide.
The most common cause of losing your account is due to a scam.
People will send in-game messages claiming to be Pokémon Vortex administrators or representatives saying something along the lines of:
or
"You have won a special Pokémon, please reply with your password to claim it"
This is never real - Myself and other Pokémon Vortex representatives will NEVER ask you for your account information without you first presenting us with an issue you need help with. Even then, we never need your password, only a username is sufficient enough for us to correct most problems.
Other forms of scams can include people offering you "hacks" / "cheats" or "bots" - These programs they ask you to download are not normally what they say they are, they can gain access to anything on your computer if you let it. Even browser extensions are unsafe to download as they can read through personal data.
If you willingly give out your password or download programs to gain advantages in the game, you deserve to lose your account and we will not help as it happens too often and takes up too much time for us to keep having to retrieve your accounts.
Moving on to the main point of this topic is creating strong passwords and to stop people gaining access to your account by other means.
The second most common cause of people losing their account is people they know stealing them. If you have friends who play the game, you need to remember that they know a lot about you, if your password is your dogs name, this is the worst idea in the history of bad ideas.