Are your Passwords safe enough?

This article is inspired by one incidence just a week ago, happened with by friend. His one of the account got hacked. On analysis I found that there were two reasons why the profile got hacked easily, weak password and poor security features. In this post I will discuss about setting strong passwords. I will discuss about securing your Facebook profile in another post.

So PASSWORD:

Passwords have become the integral part of our lives, use of passwords range from email accounts, PC profiles, social media accounts to bank accounts. Password is a secret phrase set by the user to secure the information from unauthorized access. A good password should be Strong, Safe and Secure.

Strong Password:

A strong password is one which

1. Should be at least 8 characters long, but the longer the better.
2. Should use both upper and lower case letters (passwords are case sensitive).
3. Should contain numbers.
4. Should use at least one non-alphabetic character, such as ! @ # $ % * ( ) – + = , < > : “ ‘ .

Safe & Secure Password:

I feel a safe password is one which is strong and easily memorable. Imagin a situation when you created a strong password with random words for e.g. "H$p12me)" and you can't remember it, then such strong passwords are of no use. A secure password according to me is one which cannot be guessed easily.

Some bad password practices to avoid:

1. Do not use names of family members and pets and their birthdays in the password. Using names of family members with birthdays attached to it will show a strong password if you enter in password strength determining software but they are easily guessed because with social networks like Facebook anyone having access to your profile can get the names and birthdays of your family and friends. eg - jakie2333, anita0404 (anita is name of wife with birthday 4th April)
2. Do not use dictionary words exactly eg - warehouse, password etc.
3. Use of sequential numbers like password1234, 12345
4. Use of much obvious words like e.g. - qwerty, asdf123 etc.
5. Using same password on many different places. - It's difficult to use separate password for all your accounts but same password should not be used for sensitive accounts like bank accounts, trading accounts, webhosting control panel accounts etc.
6. Using untrusted software and apps for storing passwords. This is one more issue. If you intend to forget password and store passwords using some software on your PC or Mobile, be sure that it’s a trusted software from reputed developer. using some bad software may compromise the stored passwords.

How to create a strong memorable password?

The most common method of doing this to make a password based on a easy sentence.. You can remember your own sentence. Here I give one example.

My sister Deeksha was born on 04-02-1990

so the password can be MsDwbo04-02 . here one can also use $ in place of s to make more strong.

Here this password is quite a strong password and fulfills all the criteria of strong password and it can also be remembered easily. You can create any such different ideas for making a strong password.

Some other things to keep in mind:

• Change the password periodically.
• Do not use same password for workplace and personal use. Workplace passwords are vulnerable.
• Do not use very easy password recovery questions. Questions like your mothers maiden name and your best friends name, the answers of which are easy to find out are bad options to set as password recovery.
• Associate mobile number for password recovery. Now a days almost all services has this option.
• Don’t share passwords with too many people.

Finally, Stay safe online.


If you have any more easy ideas for creating strong easily memorable passwords, do share with all by commenting on this post.