Choosing A Good Password

 

When asked to choose a password for an online account or when setting up your home computer, the most important rule is to make it something that someone cannot easily guess.  It is also important to make it something that is easy for you to remember.  It is important to make the password memorable the most secure password is useless if it has to written down as taped to the bottom of your keyboard so that it can be remembered.  The most common mistake in choosing passwords is that most people tend to choose a single word or string of numbers that is familiar such as the name of a relative, a birthdate, phone number or even their own name.  Even the use of a common English word alone is a bad idea.  Most hackers use what is called a hashing list, which is basically a dictionary of common words to crack a password through brute force.  A good password usually consists of 8-12 characters and includes a mixture of upper and lower case, numbers and punctuation marks. 

 

Lets create a password:

 

1. Start with a phrase that is easy to remember for our example I will use:

 

look before you leap

 

2. Abbreviate or shorten words to create a string of text.  Use sound alikes for instance 4 in place of for or U in place of You in our example phrase.

 

Our example now looks like this

 

look b4 u leap

 

3. Now mix cases so that there are mixture of capital and lower case letters in your password.

 

Our example is now:

 

LookB4ULeap

 

4. Next we can throw in some numbers and punctuation to make it even more difficult to guess or hack.  In our example I have replaced the o’s with 0’s the e’s with 3’s and the a’s with @’s.

 

Our example now looks like this:

 

L00kB4Ul3@p

 

Be creative, if your password contains a T use a +, if it contains a s try a $. 

 

Another important factor in password usage is to change them often.  Try to stick to a 30-60 day timeframe.  This is usually often enough that even if a hacker gets the password list of the site you visit or account you use, chances are it will likely be different by the time he gets around to using it.

 

Password Security is one of the easiest ways to prevent fraud and theft online.  A few minutes of creativity and thought put into a password can prevent hours of headaches later.  The better the password, the more likely it is to stay secure.