The most pressing concern for each online user is the password. You can have passwords for many things such as a gaming website all the way up to your online banking. Password security is very important to each person since much private information is stored online for a lot of people, also taking in the fact that cloud computing is taking over people will be putting a lot of critical company files online no matter if they are encrypted, if the criminal gets their hands on that encryption password then all that information may become public.
Going online and just searching you can find many tips on how to secure your passwords and what to keep as a password and what not to keep as one. We found a comprehensive site on this matter, which is Mac based, but it covers the worries of everyone: http://macmost.com/online-password-security.html. Essentially what is happening these days is people are creating programs that will keep on trying to break through you security barrier by continually trying common password types.
Maybe the top 100 easy passwords such as abc123, which no one should keep as this is the easiest guess.
The biggest mistake you can make is keeping the password for all your web accounts the same as this is potentially the key to everything. Once one password is discovered go and plug in to each website and voila you have this persons email accounts, Facebook, Amazon, write what you like and buy what you like it was all given to you on a golden tray. Do not use dictionary words or pet/family member names these are very easily guessed if someone is personally attacking you. When given the security question option make your own question rather than using a default as your mother’s maiden name may be easily guessed.
Change your password often and don’t keep it simple it may be hard to remember at first but if you use a desktop or a laptop you always keep on hand store it on a protected password file on your computer as this will not be easily accessible to a hacker. I have discovered a mix of letters and numbers maybe the best password with differentiating between capital and lower case letters, which at first is hard to remember but with repetition you can memorize it. A good example for a password would be something difficult like this: Ng42tH6L8, but it may not be possible for even you to remember this so keep it meaningful to you and at the same time don’t make it if you’re a 49ers fan something like your email address is big49erfan@gmail.com your password shouldn’t be fanof49er. So keep it simple enough you will remember but others wont be able to guess it.
I think that passwords should be acronyms of phrases. This makes them secure and allows you to remember them easily. Say you want your password to be "I love UNCC and the 49ers". Do the following:
ReplyDelete1. Use the acronym "iluat49ers", "i" being for "I", "l" being for "love", "u" being for "UNCC", "a" being for "and", and "t" being for "the".
2. Capitalize the "l" and "t". You have "iLuaT49ers".
3. Replace the "a" with the "&" sign". Replace the "s" with the "$" sign. You have "iLu&T49er$".
4. Replace the "i" with a "1". You have "1Lu&T49er$".
That password is secure, having several lowercase and uppercase letters, symbols, and numbers and is long. It is also easy to remember.
I don't think the problem is so much having an easy to guess password as it is having more intense security questions. If someone is going to try to get onto one of your accounts, then chances are they know you and are trying to guess to be funny, or they are trying to get into your account and steal information. If the latter is the case I think that the hacker will select answering a security question to access the password. These questions usually require very general information, a maiden name or a pets name in which case you need to know very little about the person you are hacking(much of that information can be found by facebook stalking). I thing a big portion of being secure on the internet is knowing the people you allow into your own life.
ReplyDeleteas far as keeping a password many people depending on memory capacity shall keep something simple or if they can remember complicated. on the security question front these questions should be such that no one but yourself or a close relative or friend can guess in case of a unfortunate even occurring. but now a lot of sites offer a send the password to my backup account option in case you forget one but not the other.
ReplyDeleteIt amazes me the number of people out there that use these common passwords like 123456, password, etc because it just makes me wonder what they are thinking when they use them. They're so common and easy to figure out. I mean yes it sucks to try and remember all these passwords you come up with, especially the crazy long ones that at the time seem like a good one and you end up forgetting later, but I know plenty of people that keep excel documents saved under crazy names with all their passwords to everything from your xbox live account to online billing accounts, even email passwords, but no one would know what that document really was by reading the name of it. And this may or may not seem like a good idea, but for some this works best and they dont have the same password for everything and if they forget it, they have it saved somewhere. So come up with creative passwords and drop the common ones you know someone will figure out!
ReplyDeletehttp://howsecureismypassword.net/ here is an interesting tool it provides some insight as to how secure your password is and it also provides a interactive tool to create a tool to have a relevant password to your interest so you wont forget a password like bbc296g49e
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