While the Internet has made information easier to access, it has also made our personal information more vulnerable to attacks. More and more our lives and personal information are floating around on the internet for anyone to see. In order to protect our sensitive personal information, we live in a password protected world. There are different login accounts for bank accounts, email, social networking sites, and newspaper subscriptions and so on.
The trouble is remembering our various passwords. So instead we use simple reminder things like our children’s names or our birthdays. Or we keep it simple and use the same password for all our logins. Hackers know and rely on people to do this. Here are a couple of tips to avoid becoming a victim:
1. Use Complex and Strong Passwords
Weak passwords include an address, family names, pet names, your school, 123456, ABCDEF or any combination thereof, and never ever leave the field plain blank. These are guaranteed ways to let strangers into your personal information.
A strong password consists of a series of case-sensitive letters and numbers and is at least eight letters long. Many security experts say passwords longer than 15 characters are ideal. Typically the longer the password, the more difficult and time consuming it is to hack.
Best practices strongly recommend not using anything that can be found in a dictionary. Hackers use a method called a dictionary attack where a hacker will literally go through the entire dictionary. This can be an English dictionary and other languages as well, trying to guess a password. This dictionary attack takes only hours to crack a password.
Another common hacking method is called brute force. Brute force is more time consuming than the dictionary attack, but it’s not impossible. This method basically goes through all the possible combinations of keys on a key board. Ideally the longer the password the more difficult it is to hack.
2. Don’t Forget and Change is Good
The most difficult part of having a strong password is remembering your strong new password. Now, not only can hackers not get into your personal information, but neither can you.
The goal of creating these complex passwords is to seem as random as possible. Try and find something that has meaning only to you and get creative. After creating your password use it immediately and frequently during the course of the day to help with memorization.
Best practices suggest changing personal passwords every ninety days. This may seem like a pain, but there are plenty of hackers and criminals in the world that would love to have access to your bank account and credit card information. So changing passwords regularly is recommended to stay safe on the Internet.
Don’t write your passwords down, as it is easy for prying eyes to find these passwords. If you have too many passwords to remember there are free programs to store and keep your passwords safe. Surprisingly enough, one such program is called Password Safe. It is free and will store your passwords in an encrypted format, so that others cannot access them. It is available for download at http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net/ .
