We all know that using a weak password is a no-no. Your dog’s name, your birthday or the word “password” are all bad ideas as they lend a higher probability to being cracked. While using a strong password may not be feasible for every login you create, you should definitely use on important sites, such as your online banking login.
A very nifty web tool which Microsoft makes available is their Online Password Strength Checker. This tool is very simple, just type your password in the box and you can instantly see whether it is weak, medium or strong. Don’t worry, your passwords are not saved, everything seems to be accomplished through client side script.
Give your current passwords a try and make sure they are at the appropriate strength.
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This might be expecting a little overkill to show the results for “Best.” The military requires upper and lower-case, numbers and special characters with a minimum of 10 digits/characters, and the PW checker only said that combo was “good,” not “best.” I had to add 4 more digits/characters to get it to “best.” I think a 14 digit/character combination PW is a little excessive; it would already take a week or more for “auto-cracker” software to break a 10 digit/character combo PW.