| Much of our lives are online these days. Not just | | | | hard to guess! If you can come up with a sequence of |
| records and financial transactions, but also our identity | | | | characters, perhaps the first character of each word |
| and much of our communications. And what protects | | | | in a line from a favorite song for example, you've got |
| this all? A major piece is a whole bunch of passwords, | | | | something easy to remember yet hard to guess. That |
| which are often easily guessed words and phrases. | | | | is an ideal password, assuming you periodically change |
| Unfortunately we often have too many passwords to | | | | it as well! Passwords need to be occasionally changed, |
| remember, which makes it more likely we'll choose | | | | and many systems enforce this. |
| simple and easy to guess ones. And equally bad, we | | | | Can you share passwords between systems? Ideally |
| often share the same password between accounts | | | | no, but in practice you may need to if you have as |
| so if someone guesses one password they can then | | | | many accounts as the average person. For every |
| get into all of our accounts. | | | | critical account, for example financial accounts, you |
| Hackers, also known more accurately as | | | | need to have a unique and complex password. For |
| cybercriminals, have sophisticated password guessing | | | | less critical accounts, for example email, it's still |
| programs. One technique they use is to try all the | | | | important but not as much so. Having your email stolen |
| words in a dictionary as a password. These | | | | is not as bad as having your mortgage money stolen |
| dictionaries not only contain normal dictionary words | | | | for example. For less important accounts, for example |
| but other common passwords like names, common | | | | free accounts for newspaper and forum accounts, it's |
| keyboard patterns like "qwerty" and much more. So it's | | | | OK to share passwords. You should still not pick |
| important never to choose a dictionary word or | | | | dictionary words or other common phrases, and you |
| common term as your password. | | | | also should still change your passwords periodically. |
| Short passwords are also much easier to guess than | | | | Experts will tell you to never write your passwords |
| long passwords. I recommend passwords of at least 8 | | | | down. Experts are often wrong. Write down your non |
| characters long, preferably including at least one lower | | | | critical passwords, carry them in your wallet or purse, |
| case letter, one upper case letter, one number and one | | | | and treat them like cash. |
| non alphanumeric character. These passwords are | | | | |