There are many password crack tools that have the ability to obtain your passwords quickly. The easier your password, the faster the hacker can start doing damage! You should never use the same password across multiple sites including your online banking, Facebook, Twitter, Email, FTP, Blog Admin, etc. You should always use a different password for each site that requires you to log in.
If someone was to obtain your password and you use this password across all sites, they could gain access to all of the sites you have an account with.
Make your password hard to guess and never use these classic and easy to remember passwords as hackers try these passwords with brute force password software.
A list of passwords you should never use just because there easy to remember or type
- qwerty – An easy password and one that could be obtained in seconds.
- password – Very common password usually set as a default when you sign up with a new site or service. You should change this immediately!
- 12345 or 09876 or abcde – Too easy to guess these.
- Your name, wife’s name, kids name or pet’s name followed by a number such as 0 or 1.
- Your location such as city or state.
- Your street address – Another easy password to obtain searching your name online.
- The last 4 numbers of your social security. This one is not that easy to obtain, but you should never use it as a password.
- Your date of birth – This one is used a lot believe it or not and anyone who’s a little savvy can get your birth date easily.
- letmein – Just like “password” another common password supplied by sites and services. The problem with this is that people forget to change their passwords.
- Favorite sports team or rock band – More than likely you have this information someone where and probably on your Facebook profile.
I know I can add a lot more, but these seem to be common passwords that too many people are using.
What’s a good password?
A password should be made up of at least 8 digits that should include one upper case character, one number and a special character. Here are a few examples of strong passwords;
- !9hKonep
- $F5aowm
- %8Lhqfig
These are considered hard to guess passwords, but are also hard to remember. Here’s a way you could better remember your passwords and still keep others from guessing them.
Weak Password
FrankJ1962 – This is my first name and first initial of my last name with my birth year. I would never use this, but instead, I will substitute characters and letters to make the password easy to remember, but hard to guess.
Strong Password
Fr@nkJi962 – I substituted the “a” with “@” and the “1” with “I”. It is easy for me to remember, but yet it’s hard to guess.
You should change your passwords every 6 months.
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A lot of people think easy is best. I don’t .
I change my passwords all the time. The longer and more complex the better.
I don’t trust the Secure Log-in anymore so I write them down.I am not afraid anyone will steal them since the notebook is locked in a desk drawer.
What I am wondering is if you don’t have WOT and you get directed to a bogus page to sign into your email account and you do sign in on the page does make it easier for your password to get hacked? I would think – yes?
Thanks for the article.
I was once advised to pick a password that is the first letter of each word in a favorite song lyric and add “2!” Works beautifully for creating crazy passwords.
Can you recommend a secure product where I can store all my crazy passwords? Something web-based or mobile is preferred.
Tracy,
I am not a fan of password keeper software. I would rather try to remember them instead. I like your password selection process, very cool.
Gostaria de saber se voce sabe como vejo quem esta me ligando no confidecnail, meu celular a da operadora vivo, e é cartao, ja faz algum tempo que alguem me liga todos os dias no privado, as vezes chingas as vezes nao.
Desde ja agradeço.
Evadman,
What a great and thorough comment I could have used this for a blog post. If you ever want to guest post, please contact me. Thank you!
Great post! Now I know what are easy and hard to remember passwords. Thanks for the tips, I learned so much in here. =)