If you’re going to be gallivanting about the internet, you’re going to need to have a halfway decent password to protect your account from being hacked. Now, to be fair, most of the time, when an account or service is broken into, the fault lies solely with the user. Maybe they didn’t scan often enough for viruses, spyware, and malware. Perhaps they fell for a phishing scam.
Or it’s possible they gave their password out to someone with whom they had a falling out- and didn’t bother to change it.
Still, there’s a chance that your account might catch the attention of someone who’s rather…better equipped than your average scammer or spambot. If that should happen, well… you’d best hope you’ve got a strong password. If you don’t, your account is going to be changing hands rather quickly.
While sometimes there’s nothing you can do, it always helps to protect yourself. It’s not too hard to put together a password that anyone could be proud of, thankfully. Here’s a few things you can do to make sure your password takes longer than a few seconds to figure out.
How Long Should It Be?
Keep it fairly long- somewhere over 10-15 characters. There’s no such thing as ‘too long,’ so as long as you can keep the whole thing memorized, have a go at it.
What Should It Look Like?
You’ve probably heard this quite often before, but you should use a combination of letters (both upper and lowercase), numbers and symbols in your password. Further, do your best to avoid repeating any characters. It shouldn’t be that difficult.
A good way to go about putting a password together would be to start with some word or phrase that has some special meaning or significance to you…then add the numbers and symbols at intervals.
For this example, let’s use “Rosebud.”
1. Rosebud
2. R5o8S1b7u5d0
3. R@5o8S1b7!u3d0#
There you have it. If you’d prefer, you can swap the letters around in any way you desire, for a bit of added security- but it’s not strictly necessary.
How Am I Supposed To Memorize That?
I admit, it’ll take a while- but it’ll be worth it in the long run. Keep a notepad near your system with all of your passwords jotted down onto it. If you like, you can keep them on your mobile phone- though that’s somewhat of a greater security risk, since it’s pretty easy for a phone to go missing, and malware does exist for those devices.
One thing, though- don’t keep the passwords on a notepad file on your PC. Those are very easily compromised.
Ultimately, once you’ve used the password enough, you should have it committed to memory. Like I said, it’ll take time-particularly if you’ve got some 18 character monstrosity that you’re trying to keep in your head. At the end of the day, it’s still worth doing.
Do I Need To Change It?
Personally, I’d recommend changing your password every four to six months. You don’t need to do a lot- maybe swap around a few characters, add a letter or symbol here and there. Nothing too fancy or complex- you’re not going to need to write a totally new password every time you change it. This way, if there does happen to be someone trying to crack into your account, you’ll ensure all their work goes straight out the window.
How Do I Know If My Password Is Secure?
PasswordMeter’s a good place to check, as a general rule. If you’re leery about submitting it to that site, however, just ensure it looks similar to the Rosebud example above, and you should be just fine.
How Do I Keep It Safe?
Basically, don’t be stupid. Run regular virus and spyware checks, use safe browsing practices, and exercise caution online-and never tell anyone your password. If a Microsoft tech asks for the password to your hotmail account….they’re not a Microsoft tech. That data’s stored on their servers.
Really, you just need to do everything you should be doing already.
Image Credits: EUTimes,
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