Many of my clients, friends, and family know that I am a stickler for having strong passwords.
A strong password will not guarantee that a website won’t be hacked, but it can go a long way to keeping the “cyber-baddies” away from your confidential information.
Typically, a strong password consists of at least six characters, (I tend to use ten or more) that are a combination of letters, numbers, and symbols. You should have both upper and lower case letters in your password.
Don’t be the weak lock in the neighborhood.
If you make your home hard to break into, a burglar is not going to waste their time on it. They are going to head to your neighbors to see if their house is an easier break-in. It’s the same with password attacks. If the password is too complicated, the hacker moves on to the next account.
I see this in the activity logs of my hosting server all the time. Hackers will try to log in with a common username such as “admin” and use a weak password. Once they find they can’t hack in, they leave my serverand move on to someone else.
How to get strong passwords and make them easy to use.
For about five years, I have been using a program called 1Password. This is a nice little application that integrates into your web browser and keeps your passwords and other important information in an encrypted software vault. To access any password protected website, all you need to do is push a button on your web browser, type in your one secure password for the program and 1Password with then auto-fill your user information and password for that website.
This is a really great program. 1Password will create complex passwords for you so you can be sure that each website you log into has its own strong password.
The program can also keep other personal data safe such as credit card numbers, secure notes, and other important information.
There are other programs out there such as LastPass that do close to the same thing. I am just not as familiar with them so I cannot give you an informed opinion.
I feel it is vitally important to make sure you have strong and secure passwords and you are organized and safe with them. Please, don’t be the Post-it note person.
Disclaimer: I do not make any money off you buying any product I discuss in this article.
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