Top Four Ways to Ensure a Secure Password
If you use a computer or go online, you are going to need a password. You need a password to get into a computer, to go online or to enter a website. Many websites now require a password to enter. Without a doubt, creating and remembering various passwords are a pain. Managing your passwords safely may mean having to make up numerous arcane number and letter combinations, all according to each website’s required minimum or maximum character count. You may have to memorize or take many notes on what password belongs to what website. And when you’re done logging all your passwords with the corresponding websites – it’s time to change them again. Unfortunately, passwords are a necessary evil to keep your information private and secured.
Your password should be as least obvious as possible. For instance, you never want to use your name, or your spouse, child or dog’s name. These are too easy. If you like collecting pyramids don’t use pyramid as your password. If you are a wrestling fan, don’t create a password after a popular wrestler. And so on. You want to keep your passwords safe by not making them so obvious. Uncovered passwords are the easiest way for a hacker to break in to your online account and have their way with your account until you discover something’s wrong. Hackers are known for scouring the World Wide Web in search of finding passwords that match with dictionary listings and they also have perfected other tools to help find those easy passwords.
Most people find it very difficult to manage their passwords. During a recent online survey, Over fifty percent of online consumers report using a combination of numbers and letters in their passwords while many of them admitted to using the name of pet or a person; 40% report keeping their passwords written down in notebooks or post it’s, where they can be easily viewed, lost or stolen; 34% report they have never changed their passwords; And 27% of these passwords users describe themselves as PC professionals.
Appropriate password management will never be easy, but you can at least simplify it. Prevention is the key. If you can prevent your password from being discovered, you are protecting yourself and your personal and financial information from hackers. Here are the top four ways to insure a secure password:
1. Trick your memory into creating better passwords. You can start with the title of a movie you saw recently or a favorite book. You can take the first letter of each title word and add a meaningful number at the beginning, middle, or end, such as your golden birthday or the year you started school. Each time you update your password, you can use a different movie, book and year. For your minor online accounts such as movie sites, news sites and other websites that don’t have your personal or financial information, you may choose a combination of initials and a month or year you graduated from high school, such as RWS061993 for the Herald News. For the more critical website passwords, such as your banking and credit card accounts, make the password as difficult as possible, perhaps by using a series of letters and numbers, like 10rT31w05s. The password can also become more difficult to create or remember if the website is case sensitive.
2. Never use the same password with every website or for all of your transactions. Although this only makes for one password to remember, once your password is figured out, the hacker can get into all of your accounts. Hackers can cause a lot of damage before they are discovered and this is what you want to prevent.
3. Try a password management tool to help reduce the hassle of managing your passwords. If you decide to use a password management tool, find one that will encrypt and store all of your data on your PC, such as Siber System or Roman Labs. Be careful if you are allowing Windows to store your passwords, especially if the PC is shared by other people. Multiple users can put your passwords at risk.
4. Change all of your critical website passwords often, usually every 3 months or so. For the minor online websites, or those without your personal or financial information, you should change those at least once or twice a year.
