Password tips
PASSWORD PROTECTION
Ever wondered how to make and keep a secure password?
Read below to see find out how.
As always, if you have any questions give us a call at 718-676-6910
Password Protection
PASSWORDS 101
Passwords are the key to all of your (personal) information online. Therefore, websites warn users to make sure they create and remember a password which won’t be easy to crack by hackers. Users are always asking, “If I make a difficult password to crack, how do I remember it?!” Therefore, in this week’s newsletter we will discuss several different approaches to keeping your information secure – without the need to pull out your hair trying to remember what your password is!
Approach #1:
Use one crazy, yet easy to remember password, and change it for every website or program.
What do we mean?
To create the “standard” password:
(1) Think of your favorite book or saying.
(2) Take the first letter of each word.
(3) Make at least one letter capital.
(4) Interchange or add in a digit or two (“i” to “1”)
(5) Interchange a letter for a symbol (such as “s” to “$”)
(6) We recommend making sure this password is 6-8 characters long.
To Change the password based on the program:
Add in the first letter of the particular website or program to the beginning of the password
.
.
Why are all these steps necessary?
(A) This password will be hard for people who are looking to hack your account, since it will not be a standard dictionary word.
(B) We recommended adding the symbols and numbers so that this password will conform with any websites or programs which require symbols or numbers to be incorporated within your password.
(C) We added a different letter, based on the website or program, so that in case your password is compromised, the hacker will not have free reign of all your accounts, since all the passwords will be different (by that one letter!)
Approach #2:
Use a program, which stores all your passwords.
There are two variations:
1. One which only keeps the information locally on the device you installed it on.
2. One which keeps the information in the cloud.
What’s the practical difference between the two options?
Option 1 – Using a program which is completely on your computer may sound safer. However, if the computer is compromised (via a hacker or simply being misplaced) all your passwords are lost as well!
Option 2 – Using a web based program is generally more convenient, since you can have one password program synced across
all your devices. However, many people steer clear of this option since all your passwords are in the cloud, which scares a lot of people away since the key to all their information is in cyber space.
However, we do not recommend using this approach due to potential security breaches.
Approach #3:
We find many people store all the passwords in one document, which is highly dangerous for numerous reasons. They are:
1. If your hard drive fails, how will you be able to access them? (Imagine how frustrating it will be to have an online backup, yet not know the password to access the information!)
2. If someone is able to hack into your computer, we have full confidence they will find the file which holds the key to all your passwords.
As always, if you have any questions or concerns,
feel free to call us at 718-676-6910
