Passwords in the news again

If you have not heard about it in the news, a large number of people are using the same password for every login that they have. On top of that, the passwords are not considered medium or strong (numbers, letters, upper case letters, special characters, and over 8 characters in length).

Don’t let this happen to you!

In a perfect scenario, you would have a unique password for every account you have. It should be hard for someone to guess and easy for you to remember. It should also have the following so that it is hard for a bot or a human being to gain access through either a brute force or a dictionary attack: numbers, letters, upper case letters. It should also be a sufficient number of characters. This number used to be 8, but even this number is too short if system access does not limit attempts.

Many websites only allow a certain number of wrong responses before suspending account access and sending an email to the account holder’s primary email account to reset the password, but don’t count on it because not every company puts security first and foremost into the design of their website. Also, if an account of yours has been compromised, a perpetrator does not need an infinite number of guesses. The bot or the human might only need 1 try.

Tips: Your bank(s) login should not be the same as any of you other accounts. If the other accounts get hacked, criminals will try any and every site to see if you have an account that they can access. You don’t want to give them the keys to your financial institution’s account that is in your name.