5 Simple Steps to a Super Secure Password
News flash: Lots of people use easily hacked passwords. Last week, Rick told you about an analysis of 32 million recently stolen passwords, and how the majority of them were as simple as the numbers 123456.
Sure, we've given you some tips on how to formulate a smart password in the past, but I thought it was time to roll it all up into one easy to digest post. Here's everything you need to know to make a strong, secure password:
- Make your password utterly unrelated to you personally. No names of spouses, pets, or old high schools. No birthdays or social security numbers.
- Mix upper and lower case. And throw in at least one non-alphanumeric symbol, like !, @, or ? if possible.
- Base your password on an extended phrase rather than a single word. You can then abbreviate the phrase and mix up the case, such as: 2bon2b*Titq. That mouthful of virtually uncrackable gibberish comes from "To be or not to be; that is the question."
- Make them all different. Even if you have a great password, don't use it in more than one place. Every password you generate should be unique, so if someone hacks your Facebook account, they don't also get your bank account login at the same time. At that leads to...
- Use a password manager. There's no way a real human can track and manage dozens of unique passwords like the one in tip #3. So rather than taking shortcuts in password quality or using the same one over and over, use a manager to store them all for you. Sure, that program is vulnerable due to the master password which unlocks it, but it's still tons safer than the alternative.
