We have so many things that require passwords these days. Our e-mail accounts, Bank accounts, social media profiles, all the things that we use to run our lives digitally. You would think that the one thing that we all should be relying upon is a strong password. Unfortunately, there are still quite a few people who do not use strong enough passwords. There is a multitude of reasons for it; the lack of time, you want a secure password to remember, you can’t think of something complex enough. To be clear, I have had my fair share of “easy” passwords, but I have found that taking the time at the outset to come up with a complex password is beneficial in the long run. First things first. What constitutes a “strong” password? Well, there are lots of different things that you can do. Having a combination of capital letters, numbers and “Special Characters” will help to ensure that your password remains secure.
1) Special Characters – Special characters are any of the characters you can see on your keyboard above the numbers on the top line. Typically you would have to press Shift on your keyboard, so instead of pushing 1234 you get !@#$ as an example. When you use it in a password, you could have something like *50Western or Western50%, where the special character is at the beginning or the end of the password, but the most effective way of using special characters is in the middle of the password. Because most people use actual words as their passwords, breaking it up with a special character is a great way to keep the hackers guessing. Having a password like We(stern50 where the special character is somewhere in the middle.
2) Use of caPital lettErs in odd ways – Using Capital letters is always good for passwords. Because most passwords are required to be case sensitive, having a password with a capital letter will ensure a level of security for your information. The trick here is to use capital letters in a way that will leave people guessing. Using capital letters at the beginning of the password, for example, Toronto#75, will be less effective than if you put the letter somewhere else in the word. A great example of this would be to#roNto75.
3) Numbers – There are literally, trillions of number combinations that you can use. You’ll notice that in the past two examples I’ve been using passwords with only 2 numbers. This is one way that you can do it. Another way is that you can have more than two, you can have four or five. The other thing that you can do is have numbers somewhere other than the beginning or the end of the password. Like with capital letters and Special Characters you can also put the numbers in the middle. This will also make the ability for hackers to guess what your password more difficult, which in turn makes your information more secure.
We so heavily depend on our passwords to ensure that our information is kept safe but also because it makes our lives so much better. I remember one time I had a relatively week password for my home wifi. At the time I didn’t think anything of it but what was bugging me was that the speed of my home internet was getting slower and slower all the time. We could still watch movies and whatnot but the load time for the web pages that my wife and I would go to would take longer and longer to load. Eventually, she and I had had enough and changed the password to something seriously complicated and do you know what happened? The speed of our internet tripled practically overnight! The only explanation that I have is that someone figured out out internet password (which wouldn’t have been hard, it was a pretty week) and was using our internet instead of their own.
It’s essential to have strong passwords to protect your information (or your internet bill in my case). My humble recommendation to you is that if you don’t have a complex enough password the goi and change it so that it is more so. This is a simple and efficient way to make the services you use on the internet SO MUCH more secure. It’s really worth the time spent.
Do you have a secure enough password?
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