How To Keep Passwords Safe
Here, you will discover how to keep your passwords safe. As you know, passwords are used almost everywhere online, and can access anything from email to a bank account. On the scary side, password hacking has become a very common problem as well. Are you protecting your passwords like you should be? Scroll down to find out how safe your online identity is, and to learn about easy, free, and safe password selection and storage techniques for your online business!
How To Keep Passwords Safe
If someone else obtains your passwords, they can find your private data, destroy your files, and take over your computer - putting both you and your customers in jeopardy. Follow these techniques to help keep your passwords safe!
Techniques you can use to keep passwords safe:
- Make your passwords six to eight characters long. The longer it is, the more difficult it will be to attack the password with a brute-force search.
- Passwords can include upper case (capital letters) and lowercase letters, numbers and symbols. Try to use at least one capital letter and two numbers.Use as many different characters as possible when forming your password.
- Use different passwords for each online account you access.
- Change your passwords regularly, every 90 days or so.
Techniques you should AVOID to keep passwords safe:
- Do NOT use the same password for every account, because if someone cracks it then you will have a serious problem on your hands. This may seem like common sense, but the majority of online users use the same password for more than one site because they are afraid they will forget it otherwise.
- Do NOT use common words, because some hacker programs try every word in the dictionary.
- Do NOT use geographical or biographical names that are listed in standard dictionaries.
- Do NOT use personal information like your name, kid's or pet's names, or birth dates that someone already knows or could easily obtain.
- If you must write down passwords, under NO circumstances should you store them somewhere on your computer or nearby it. Even better use a secure password storage software like KeePass (discussed further below).
How To Choose A Safe Password
Unsafe passwords are like leaving the key to your house outside the front door. This may sound exaggerated, but many people overlook their passwords once the sign up process is over and then fail to realize that they've been hacked until damage has already occurred.
To avoid this problem, we use RandPass to choose a safe password. RandPass provides random, hard-to-crack passwords for FREE. There are a couple of rules that are used: all passwords are 8 characters long, lowercase, and include one non-alpha character in the middle. So, if you're having trouble making up a secure password, RandPass can do the work for you.
- Often, people pick passwords that are too easy because they think they're going to forget them otherwise. One way to create a strong password that's also easy to remember, is to think of a memorable phrase and the use the first letters to spell out a password. If the password requires a number, use 4 for the word "for" and so on. If you have to write down a password to remember it, at least it you can write a phrase and not the password itself.
Free & Safe Password Storage
Your password is the way the computer verifies that someone logging in is really you, so pick something that cannot be guessed by others. The top reasons people gain unauthorized access to a password protected system is because of the following:
- They guessed the password.
- They found it on a piece of paper next to the victim's computer, or stored in the computer itself.
- They used a software program that can guess many common passwords in a short amount of time.
To avoid the above storage problems, we chose KeePass storage software. KeePass is a free, open-source (OSI certified) password manager that can store your passwords securely. It puts your passwords in one secure database, that is then locked with one master key or a key file, so it can be stored on a portable flash drive.
This way, you will only have to remember only one master password to unlock the whole password database - which is securely encrypted with algorithms (currently known as AES and Twofish), and makes it extremely difficult for hackers to get into.
How To Keep Passwords Safe With KeePass
To find out more about free and safe password storage via KeePass, check out this video:
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