Do you use the same or similar password on a variety of sites? If you answered “yes,” keep reading. If you don’t, keep reading—you’ll probably still learn a thing or two.
Don’t Make a Hacker’s Job Easy
Two of the easiest ways for a hacker to compromise your accounts are by 1) guessing your simple or obvious password, e.g., date of birth, favorite sports team, child’s name, etc., and 2) by hacking into your e-mail account and finding passwords you’ve e-mailed to yourself.
Turn Easy into Complex
We echo the advice we’ve read from a variety of sources from Microsoft to Symantec … make your password random and use a mnemonic device. For example, choose an easy-to-remember saying or phrase: “My first dog was a German Shepherd named Sadie who liked to play catch” and then turn that phrase into an acronym using the first letter of each word … “My first dog was a German Shepherd named Sadie who liked to play catch” or MfdwaGSnSwltpc. Now you have a completely random password with a mix of lowercase and capital letters. Since many websites require a symbol or number, avoid using a “1” – the most common number – and consider adding a symbol in the middle of your password instead of at the end. In this case, we’ll replace the “a” in our password for “@” Mfdw@GSnSwltpc.
Check Yourself
Use Microsoft’s FREE password checker to test the strength of your password. Here are the results from our example:
Tags: Create Stronger Passwords, Creating Stronger Passwords, Hackers, Keeping your data safe, Orlando IT, Orlando IT Support
