One of the biggest issues that I see people having problems with is Passwords. Specifically having multiple passwords that they have to remember. Think about it, passwords are everywhere. You need a password to log into your banking website, you need a password to get into your e-mail, you need a password to log into each account you may have in Social media. Passwords are all over the place!
The thing is that having passwords for all of your various accounts is really important. The reason for this is because if you don’t have passwords, and more importantly effective passwords than malicious people can come in and steal any information they want about you. Identity theft is a major crime nowadays, but one of the easiest ways to prevent it is to have Passwords that are (generally) unguessable. If you’re wondering what could help make a password harder to figure out I happen to have some suggestions;
1) Use Different passwords – This is so important when you have multiple passwords for different things. If you used the same password over and over then if a hacker managed to figure out one of your passwords then they would be able to access your entire life. I would imagine that there are enough things in your life that you could use as multiple different passwords.
2) Use CapiTol LetteRs – Different case letters (upper and lower case) make it slightly more difficult to guess what the password is. Certainly, if you use capital letters in different spots throughout the password it makes it more confusing for potential hackers and machines to try and figure it out. It’s not a prevent all….but it does help a little.
3) D0n’t us3 nu634s like 73tt3rs – Using numbers in This is a language called LEET (or L33T) which, while it can be effective most of the time there are programs out there that are specifically designed to decode leet passwords. It would be advisable then that while putting numbers in your passwords can be effective, don’t exchange number for letters.
4) #Use special characters! – “special characters” are essentially any characters that are on the number line on your keyboard that you have to hold the Shift Key+any number to use. Using these at the front or the back can be effective but using them in the middle of the password is even more effective. Certainly, if you are using a specific word as your password, then having a password like Codf@ish52 would be able to (hopefully) confuse most attackers.
5) Use A Password keeper – I posted a few weeks ago about Password Keeper which is how I keep all my passwords straight. Even if you don’t want to use that particular one, I would HIGHLY advise getting some form of Password organizer which can keep all your passwords (preferably one with a master password, so you only really have to remember one) so that there is a secure place where you can keep all of your passwords.
There are so many different things that occupy our minds, wouldn’t it be nice if one of the things that we didn’t have to worry about is whether or not the password to our bank accounts or e-mail was compromised? I certainly like to think that what I have done is working. Another thing you can do is enable double verification, but I will talk about that in another post.
What I should stress about this is that no one of the 5 suggestions I’ve made here is “100% preventative”. They are intended to help prevent attacks, but if you use a combination of the five then it is much more likely that you will not be hacked.
How effective are your passwords? Do you think that there is something more you could be doing?
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