There has been a lot of publicity lately about passwords being stolen or easily hacked. So I though you would be interested to know what constitutes a “strong” or “weak” password. I will also give you a few tips on how to create good strong passwords.
Weak passwords include common words. For example perhaps the weakest password is the word “password”. Others include people and place names. Here are a few tips:-
- Avoid using family or pet names on their own.
Instead combine with numbers. For example “rover” could be made strong by
changing it to R0ver410. Using numbers instead of letters is an easy way to
make a strong password. - Think of a phrase, then use the first letter of
each word to make the password. For example “Mary had a little lamb for dinner”
could become “MhaL14d”. - Make your password longer than 6 letters or
digits, as this makes it much harder to crack. - Use a combination of letters, capitals, numbers and symbols in your password.
- Try to use different passwords for different website and definitely keep your email password separate.
http://www.passwordmeter.com is a great little website which allows you to check how secure your password is. Simply type in your desired password and this website give you a percentage score of how good it is.
Recently in the news some websites have had their membership databases hacked, which potentially means your email
address and website password may be online somewhere. This happened with Play.com and Tripadvisor. If you are concerned you can visit shouldichangemypassword.com. Here you can input your email address
and you will be told if your address appears on any of the known hacker databases out there.
Good luck remembering all your passwords!
