Secure passwords

In today’s lifestyle, passwords are everywhere. Passwords for email, shops, banks, and your computer. Nearly everything online requires a password. 

Because remembering so many passwords can get tedious, the common solution is to pick a simple password that’s easy to remember, or to use the same password everywhere. If you do that, or are concerned about your security, this article is for you. 

1. How to pick a strong password (and one you can remember!) 

For most sites, the definition of a strong password is something that uses a mix of characters, with a decent length. Sometimes an example given can look like this: ‘!Ys$PQv4’. But let’s face it, no one can remember that off the top of their head. For the average person, it’s next to impossible. 

So how do you pick a password easy to remember but hard to guess? The simplest way is to start with a simple pass phrase or word that you can remember, and work from there; for example: ‘beach’. 

To make this a strong password, its best to intentionally misspell it, or swap some letters for numbers, such as o for zero and e for three. If I do that, we end up with ‘b3ach’. We should add a capital, and also a symbol somewhere. That gives us ‘b3Ach$’. That’s already a pretty good start. 

2. A different password for each site 

It’s also important to pick a different password for each site you use. Why? It’s common these days for scammers to send fake login forms to people. If you fall for one, even by accident, you’ve given them your password you use everywhere, they then have access to all your online services. 

So how do you get a different password for each site? It’s easy! Just add something related to the site your on to your original password. For example, if you’re logging into e-bay, you can add ‘e-b’ to the end of your password. To continue our above example, that would give you ‘b3Ach$e-b’. It looks like gibberish, and it’s very secure, but to you, all you need to remember is ‘beach’ and that ‘I’m logging into e-bay’. If you were logging into a bank, you might use ‘bnk’ and your password would be ‘b3Ach$bnk’.  

So if you need to simplify your life of passwords, now is the time to change it.  

As always if you need assistance don’t hesitate to ask a professional to lend a hand. The little time and effort you spend now is worth the headache of being locked out of your own accounts, or having your information and money stolen.