Password Protection
One thing I notice is that many people do not understand how to come up with more secure passwords. Many use things like their dogs name, their address, their last name, or just something very easy to remember. The secret behind having a secure password is that it doesn’t have to just be something hard and made up that you will never remember.
Let me show you what I mean.
Lets say your last name is smith and you make your password at every account smith1. The first thing that is wrong with that password is it’s length. A good password needs to be at least 8 characters long. Also it needs to have a little complexity to it. So let’s say you still want to use that password you can strengthen the original password by using $m1ThHt!ms1. All I did to make that password is write smith forwards and then backwards right after each other then adding a one. That gave it the length that it needed. Then I use similar looking symbols instead of certain letters. Another easy way to come up with a password is to make up a phrase like “I love listening to songs on my iPod Touch!”. Take the first letter of each word which would be ILLTSOMIPT!. Also put the end character that will add to the length. Also, hold down shift for the whole first half of the password then let it go for the second half it will help it be more complex. So that would be ILLTSomipt1. Now just replace some of those letters with characters. !LLT$0m1pt1. Now remember we held down shift for the whole first half so instead of 1 at the beginning it was a !, same with the end.
Another way to keep this easy is to make the password above for an account with iTunes or something related to that phrase. Try to have a password for each and every account that you own. If you keep the phrase related to the websites they will be very easy to remember! People have been told for many years to change their passwords every 90 days or so. If you have a strong password a hacker will give up pretty soon and try to find another account with a much easier password to break. Don’t feel required to change your strong password unless you hear that the company that you have the account with has put out an alert that their security has been compromised. Also never give your password to anyone. There is something going around called phishing. An example is where you get an email saying that the company that you have the account with are doing maintenance on their site. 99.9% of the time this email will be a scam just to get your username and password. Always go to the actual website (Not by clicking on any links in the email) and if there is real maintenance going on you will be notified there. There will be another blog about phishing soon. This is just one of many examples.
To help you with making sure your passwords are strong enough use this Password Checker from Microsoft. Try to keep your passwords between Strong and Best. You can do it!
Loading ...