How to do PASSWORDS right!
Your computer, Facebook account and pretty much everything important is protected by a password these days. Remembering them and keeping up with all the accounts we have is an almost impossible task for most people. As a result we tend to use simple phrases or even use the same password on all of our accounts. These are common but very dangerous things we all do everyday. Today we are going to take a closer look at PASSWORDs, what they mean and how to do it RIGHT.
RULE# 1: Passwords should NEVER be human-readable!
Simple words or phrases like ‘password’, ‘missme’ or ‘changeme’ for instance are easy to guess and people looking to break into your accounts will try them first. Also you should avoid using names of people in your life, common places from your past and generally anything associated with you that is public knowledge. You are probably saying to yourself…. “how am I supposed to remember a password like that?”. Well don’t despair you do have options and always think creatively.
Make sure whatever password you choose meets the following criteria:
- A minimum of 8 characters in length
- Make sure you use both Upper and Lowercase lettering, and more than once
- Try to throw in some special characters like &, % or ^ (basically anything that is not a-z and 0-9)
- Easy for you to remember but very difficult to guess
ex. of a bad password: ilikecarsa100%
The same password can be creatively modified into something much better like this:
ex. of a good password: iL!kecAr$A100%
Now that we creatively modified our bad password into a good one lets talk more about how we can manage these passwords.
RULE# 2: never re-use passwords
You should always use a unique password for every account you have. Re-using passwords is a bad idea because there is always the risk that if one account gets broken into that all your accounts will. Its not easy to remember many different passwords but surely it is worth the trouble.
RULE# 3: Never write it down and put in an insecure location like in your notebook or a post-it
If you feel that it is very important that you do write down your password somewhere make sure you put it in a safe place that is locked and not accessible to anyone easily. There is also another option for you to use, websites like KeePass provide you with a central location where you can store all your passwords securely. This way you just HAVE to remember the password to get into that account. Make sure that the password you use there is at least 15 characters long and is as complex as you can make it.
RULE# 4: Change your passwords as frequently as possible, ~ every 30 days
Whether you use a service like KeePass or keep track of your passwords on your own, it’s always good practice to change them once a month. It’s not a fun thing to change a password that you just managed to memorize but it is critical that you keep changing it.
If you follow these instructions you will protect yourself from security breaches to a great degree. Even then there is always the risk that someone can hack into your accounts. If you ever suspect that you have been breached go and change all your passwords immediately.