The strength of the passwords you use day-to-day on your computer can mean the difference between someone being able to access your private information or not. The stronger you make it, the better!
Below are a few quick tips to use:
- Use a passphrase instead of a password. The longer the phrase is, the harder it is to guess or hack, but you can still make it something easy to remember – sometimes even easier than an individual word or group of letters. For example, you could use, ‘My favorite animal is a horse.’ Many sites will require the use of a number or special character, so you could alter this to be, ‘My favorite animal is a horse!’ or ‘My number 1 animal is a horse.’ Either way, the length makes it harder to crack, but it’s still easy for you to recall.
- Substitute numbers for letters in a keyword you’d like to use; think about how people create words on license plates. For example, the word ‘technology’ could be used as a password by typing it ‘T3chn0l0gy.’ Again, it’s easy to remember and will automatically include numerical characters as is often required.
- Vary your passwords from program to program and from site to site. No reason to create one master key that will open all locks, so change it up so that if one password does become compromised, it won’t allow access to everything.
- Add two-factor authentication wherever it’s available. This feature adds another level of security by sending a code to your phone or email that must be entered to complete the log in.
- Don’t keep your passwords written down anywhere. There are a number of apps to help you manage passwords that would provide a much more secure means to save them. Of course, you’ll have to remember the password to access that app! Research and find the one that’s best for you!
