Selecting a Strong Password for Online Use
It is important that every consumer not only know what strong passwords are, but they know how to create them. A password is an item that helps a computer or online server recognize your legitimacy and ability to access something. Often a person’s email or computer is hacked simply because they had a password that is easily guessed.
Consequences of Weak Passwords
When a consumer has a weak password to their computer, banking information, etc. they run the risk that a hacker or another individual in their home/office can easily access their information. With that information a consumer can then run the risk of identity theft, other forms of fraud, etc.
Selecting a Strong Password
When creating a strong password, consumers need to keep to a few guidelines that result in strong passwords and not easily guessed ones. Some of these guidelines can include:
*Try to make your password as long as possible. No, it does not need to be a sentence, but it needs to be more than six digits.
*Vary up your characters within your password as much as possible. Use letters (both upper and lowercase), numbers, symbols etc. Mix them up and never have any type of guessable sequence in the mix.
*Never use your personal information for a password. This is information that can easily be guessed by anyone who knows just a little about you.
*Never use words or phrases from the dictionary.
*Do not use a password that is the same number as your account number, date of birth, or social security number.
*Do not use a password that someone sitting by you can easily guess what you just typed. For example “1234567890”.
Password Ideas
If you find that you are stumped on how to select a password, a good method can be using the first letter of each word in a phrase. Such as “I love to ski in Utah” would be “IL2snU”. Another method people will use is to intentionally misspell words, but it is good to throw a few numbers into the mix as well.
What a Strong Password Should Not Include
When creating a strong password, you have to draw your ideas from somewhere, but you need to be careful about what information you use in your password. Things your passwords should never contain are:
*Your name, your Childs name or even your spouse’s name
*Names of past or present animals
*Names of your parents
*Names of best friends or even coworkers
*Names of your favorite movie characters
*The name of your operating system (i.e. Windows, Mac)
*Your phone number
*Your license plate number or even your driver’s license number
*Social security numbers or birth dates
*Your address
*Easily guessed numerical or alphabetical patterns
*Passwords that contain the same letters (i.e. “nnnnnn”)
Password Security
Even after you have created a strong password, it is recommended that consumers change out their passwords every 30 to 90 days. Never re-use any passwords that you have previously used and try to not use the same password on every site. Once a hacker has found out your password, if it is used on all of your other log-ons it will not take much work to get what they need.