After reading the post ‘Favourite Passwords Used Online’ from ‘My E-commerce’ blog, I totally agree with the list of most common passwords. To my surprise, I realized that even my passwords are within the list as well! And so, provided below are some important information regarding password which is crucial to the protection of our private information. Hope it does bring you great help!
What is Password?
First of all, password is a series of characters that enables a user to access a computer system. From another angle, it helps secure the computer system from unauthorized access. Password is made up of at least four to six characters, including letters, numbers and symbols, but never spaces. Often, it is used in combination with some form of identification, such as username or e-mail address.
Reason People Love to Use Common Passwords
Okay, so why people are fond of using these few passwords? The main reason would be people like passwords that are easily remembered, in case they themselves could not recall and thus being unable to log in to their computer systems. However, these passwords can be easily guessed, which therefore could allow others to break into your computer systems without much difficulty.
Risks of Using Common Passwords
The convenience of using passwords that could be easily remembered, however, turns out to be painful and costly when it is exposed to malicious users. For individuals, it could be exposure of financial information, health data and private documents that we strongly do not want others to find out. Hackers could even use your identity to open new credit card accounts, apply for a mortgage, or engage in online transactions. For organizations, it could be leak of trade secrets, financial data, intellectual property, customer lists, etc.
How to Create Strong Passwords?
Make it lengthy
A strong password should contain at least 8 or more characters. The lengthier it is, the more protective it is. Otherwise, think of a phrase or sentence that is easy to remember. It should be not only long in length, but hard to be guessed as well.
Combine letters, numbers and symbols
Make use of the entire keyboard if you can! Fully utilize the “Shift” so that you have small and capital letters, numbers, as well as symbols at the upper row. For example, substituting an ‘e’ with a ‘3’, or ‘s’ with ‘$’. The more complex your password is, the harder the hackers could guess your passwords.
Avoid using names and words from dictionary
Any of your and your loved one’s names, birthdays, or similar information should first be eliminated out of your consideration for forming any password. These are easily obtained and would be the first thing the hackers would try on. Besides, there are effective password cracking tools, which could be easily downloaded for free from the Internet, that help guess passwords based on words in dictionaries.
Change your passwords regularly
It helps keep hackers unaware. How often this should be done depends on the strength of your password. A short and weak password is recommended to be changed every week; a long and strong password can last for years.
Use different passwords for different accounts
This is to avoid all of the information to be stolen at once. If the same password is used for all the accounts, the hacker can have access to all the accounts and steal all the information once he gets your compromised password.
What is Password?
First of all, password is a series of characters that enables a user to access a computer system. From another angle, it helps secure the computer system from unauthorized access. Password is made up of at least four to six characters, including letters, numbers and symbols, but never spaces. Often, it is used in combination with some form of identification, such as username or e-mail address.
Reason People Love to Use Common Passwords
Okay, so why people are fond of using these few passwords? The main reason would be people like passwords that are easily remembered, in case they themselves could not recall and thus being unable to log in to their computer systems. However, these passwords can be easily guessed, which therefore could allow others to break into your computer systems without much difficulty.
Risks of Using Common Passwords
The convenience of using passwords that could be easily remembered, however, turns out to be painful and costly when it is exposed to malicious users. For individuals, it could be exposure of financial information, health data and private documents that we strongly do not want others to find out. Hackers could even use your identity to open new credit card accounts, apply for a mortgage, or engage in online transactions. For organizations, it could be leak of trade secrets, financial data, intellectual property, customer lists, etc.
How to Create Strong Passwords?
Make it lengthyA strong password should contain at least 8 or more characters. The lengthier it is, the more protective it is. Otherwise, think of a phrase or sentence that is easy to remember. It should be not only long in length, but hard to be guessed as well.
Combine letters, numbers and symbols
Make use of the entire keyboard if you can! Fully utilize the “Shift” so that you have small and capital letters, numbers, as well as symbols at the upper row. For example, substituting an ‘e’ with a ‘3’, or ‘s’ with ‘$’. The more complex your password is, the harder the hackers could guess your passwords.
Avoid using names and words from dictionary
Any of your and your loved one’s names, birthdays, or similar information should first be eliminated out of your consideration for forming any password. These are easily obtained and would be the first thing the hackers would try on. Besides, there are effective password cracking tools, which could be easily downloaded for free from the Internet, that help guess passwords based on words in dictionaries.
Change your passwords regularly
It helps keep hackers unaware. How often this should be done depends on the strength of your password. A short and weak password is recommended to be changed every week; a long and strong password can last for years.
Use different passwords for different accounts
This is to avoid all of the information to be stolen at once. If the same password is used for all the accounts, the hacker can have access to all the accounts and steal all the information once he gets your compromised password.
With the given information above, I believe that many of you are going to change your passwords immediately!
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