New Year! = New Password!

01/01/2012

Passwords are used everywhere especially online to allow you to gain access to your emails, contacts, documents, spreadsheets, pictures and more.

Happy New Year! By now the hangover from the previous night has got over with… now it’s time to change your passwords with following tips in mind. Why I say this I hear you ask? Well how many times have you changed your password in 2010? once or never… not good enough so beef up the security with the following tips.

Keep it long

Keep your password it least 6 characters long if not longer but there may be restriction in place on the length so it is a balancing act but on average a 6 character password is stronger than four or less. To make it easier try creating a password that is a sentence or more than one word so it becomes long and difficult to guess.

Add a sprinkle of special characters

Special characters I hear you say? Simply <>@#[])(*&^%$£”! add any of them or use them to replace a ch&rcter. It will again help make your password stronger!

No Recycling!

I don’t mean being environmentally friendliness in this context, i mean being lazy by using the same password as you email address account password for your Facebook account password. Imagine if your mate got hold of one of them… Imagine what they can get up too in your email account. Obviously don’t write your password on paper.

Change your password regularly

Stay in trend and change your password regularly this way it keeps guessing puns… well, guessing. Poker account password hmmmm would it be ‘GaGa’.

lower case and CAPITAL as part of your password

DO! have capitals in your password as passwords are normally case sensitive and this will make the hacker scream in pain!

Use num8ers

Use numbers to make it even more difficult to crack your password as many as you like though don’t use your date of birth or football team position as your numbers keep it random and don’t repeat the number more than once so use 7036 instead of 2322 as 2 is repeated three times so it is easier to crack.

Obscure

Keep it obscure don’t use your name, your family members name, date of birth, door number, team position, postcode, favourite sports team, favourite food, favourite anything related to you that the person might use to gain access. Keep the password personal and a secrete.