Passwords to various sites, services or devices tend to be increasingly important. In a world that has increasingly more information about our activities kept online, it’s unbelievable how many people continue to neglect these accounts. The attitude regarding this topic must be changed by choosing stronger, safer passwords. A study of stolen passwords revealed that 780 Yahoo passwords were composed exclusively of the word “password”, while 2295 others consisted of the logical sequence of digits “123456”, which is by far the most popular choice. The effect of predictable passwords that can be easily remembered by anyone grows exponentially with the number of services for which the users have selected the same password. Besides compromising the security of your emails, a poor password could also give others access to your Facebook profile, IM services and even bank accounts.
It may sound simple and trivial, but a strong password that you can change on a regular basis will save a lot of problems. True, it’s easy to suggest complicated passwords which nobody can remember, but there are some practical steps that will help you select the right password. A simple and effective method is to think of a phrase and use that password. Many sites accept spaces as part of your passwords and almost all sites have only a lower limit of characters, not an upper one. If you cannot enter full sentences a good idea would be to use the initial letter of each word.
For example, if you thought of “My first car was a Volkswagen Golf from 2000”, you can choose a password like mfcwavg#2000. Using # to precede a number adds an extra layer of security. With such a mix algorithm digits, lowercase, uppercase and symbols, which for anyone else would not have any meaning. Another idea suggested by many is to use simple mathematical equations or sentences. Since these are words that cannot be found in a dictionary, mathematics is an interesting topic, especially if written in a creative form. A simple example would be “Ten * 10 = 100”. If you want to check how effective your password is, you may wish to use a tool such as Microsoft’s Password Checker, which will rate it.
Even if you managed to choose a password that you think no one can break or remember it is definitely advisable not to use it on multiple websites. A group of hackers can take advantage of the poor security of a forum, for example, to steal a password and use it on other websites for which you have signed up with the same username or email address. Although technological evolution has come up with smart solutions to some of the most complex problems we face daily, the problem of weak passwords is apparently not going anywhere. Even though fingerprint detection systems and authentication tokens are good solutions they will not be widely implemented in the near future because of the large expense. Meanwhile, the volume of sensitive information posted online grows and your security is therefore lowered. It is definitely not safe to think that this will not happen to you, so start thinking about choosing safer, stronger passwords to protect your online identity.
