Passwords can be such a time-consuming annoyance. Wouldn’t you agree? It seems like no matter where we go or what we do, we’re being asked for a password or PIN. Remembering all of our passwords and PINs is a pain, and when we need to come up with a new password, it’s difficult to think of a secure one that we can remember.
While remembering and hassling with passwords can be challenging, it’s important to keep in mind why it is that we must have strong passwords. Your password is the first line of defense against an intrusion. They protect your banking info, family information, address, phone number…etc. None of this is information that you’d want getting into the wrong hands.
Passwords are the cheapest and easiest way for us to protect ourselves. They are a simple way of protecting an account or system. Passwords are generally used with some other type of identification like a username or email address, and sometimes even an account number. As the username or email address establishes our identity, the password actually authenticates who the user claims he or she is. It’s basically like the website is asking us to prove that we are who we say we are.
Although passwords provide us with a secure way to log into various accounts, the fact remains that they are fairly easily cracked. This process is much easier than one might think. A password can be cracked in several different ways. There are many password cracking tools available to less than honest people out there. Unfortunately, most of these tools are so basic that even an average user can use them effectively.
Now that we’ve established the importance of strong passwords, let’s look into the best and most simple ways to generate effective passwords. The proper password will have to contain a high degree of complexity. Three different factors to keep in mind while creating a strong password are:
- Depth – Depth means choosing a suitable password with some sort of meaning to you which is not easily guessed by others.
- Width - Width is a way to describe the various characters you use in a password. These are not letters of the alphabet, but instead are symbols such as ~, *, and #. Numbers are also part of the ‘width’ of a password.
- Length - When talking about the length of a password, it’s self-explanatory. The longer the password, the more difficult it will be to crack it. A general rule of thumb for the length of passwords is that they should be from six to nine characters in length. Anything shorter than six characters is simply not enough length to ensure that you’ve got a safe password.
Developing a safe password is half the battle. But also remember that changing your password often is highly recommended. How often you change your password is really up to you, but it is said that with websites like financial institutions and other sites which contain highly personal information, you should change the password no less often than every two months. If you delay it much longer than that, you very well may be risking the security of your online information.
Secure passwords are only one aspect of Internet security. Having a strong firewall, having excellent physical security, and also plugging any network holes are also good ways to ensure that you’re taking all of the necessary steps in order to protect your personal information. No matter what the case may be, it is always important to take all of the proper precautions in order to safeguard yourself.
Have you ever had your passwords breached? Share your experience in the comments and help out your fellow online entrepreneurs!
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Most of the users never care about their passwords and they never know how unsafe it is these days.
Adam,
Being a fellow young blogtrepreneur (can I use that as I title?), I have definitely realized how important passords can be.
Although I have yet to have a password breach, I don’t ever want it to happen.
Recently I was looking into Password management software, and was wondering if you had any recommendations? Thanks bro!
~Sam
I’ve really had to clamp down on my passwords. I used to keep them simple until I got my entire server hacked with ALL of my websites spam-bombed. That was a lot of cleanup I had to do. Not cool at all….Definitely changed up my password scheme after that incident.
We have many sites with sensitive information and we’re constantly having to change those passwords. It’s best to change them a often as possible, we usually do it once a month. Adding letters mixed with numbers and symbols is always a good idea, though some places won’t take symbols, so numbers are usually best to stick with.
Yes passwords are a big pain in the ass. Hopefully one day that all gets replaced with a fingerprint or retina scan. My girlfriend actually lost a blog due to poor password choice. She made the mistake of using 123456 as her password. That combined with the fact that she listed her e-mail right on her blog, led to someone hijacking it. They likely created some kind of script that scraped e-mail addresses from websites and tried any generic passwords.
I remember that once someone just told me his preferred way of making a password is using any word, and spelling them how they sound, rather than correctly, and putting numbers in it. For example; 2warfull3, 4ecksampool65, 83mycrowsofts22
Even throw in a few caps in there. 4ecKsamPooL65.
Or, replace some letters with numerical characters that look like the letter. 4eCks4mPo0l65
Great comments so far. I consulted for a giant telcom corp for a while, and each system had unique password requirements, and you had to change your password at varying times, and couldn’t use the same as any of the past 3 times, etc., etc. After a year it was quite a challenge to come up with and remember them all, but their security was tight, so I guess that’s what counts.
Anyone have any suggestions for Sam above?
The school I currently attend forces us to change our passwords every year, it’s a great move but its strange though that they actually store the password history in their database since it wouldn’t let me change to what I had last year. Actually took me a while to come up with a new one, lol.
Till then,
Jean
Oh yes, there are just too many passwords for us to remember and keep track these days. Do you mind sharing with us how do you keep track of your passwords?
I’ll put a big +1 for what @email_search wrote above. I use a combination of UPPERCASE, lowercase, 123 numbers and @#$ symbols in all my passwords and have a variety of passwords depending on the site.
What is really annoying is systems that have different requirements for passwords or use unconventional password requirements.
I actually had a bank account that would only allow 6-8 characters and only letters and numbers (no symbols or capitalization.) It was very frustrating that I had to uber-dumb-down my password to fit their system. Of course the girl at the customer service phone center told me this was the best way to have secure passwords. Not worth arguing with her. I don’t have an account with this bank anymore.
I am actually using a password generator and I always go by the indicator when typing up passwords. I never stop until it says that I already have entered a strong password.
@Andrew: That’s a great idea. Do you mind sharing which one you use?
It’s astounding how many people use predictable passwords. With the extend to which the internet has penetrated our lives financially, career-wise, etc , many of us take for granted that we are safe and this couldn’t be further from the truth.
I’ve been in cases where my hosting account was hacked or something, and changing password is the only thing I can do after recovering what had been lost. So I was consulted by an IT security professional and was given a sample which impressed me.
example: %mydadname2233@
Secured yet easy to remember. Hope this helps.
@JohnAtBlogtrepreneur
I use LastPass – it has a password generator built in.
Andrew
I’d recommend KeePass for password management. It’s light weight and open source.
Well, some banks and sites require that the client uses the one-time-password technique. This is a really secure method. You need either a device called time-synchronized OTP or a mobile phone to receive the OTP.
Thanks for the reminder… I definitely need to reset my banking passwords. They’re definitely not hard enough
Earlier on, I didn’t take the password strength too seriously. This was back when I was fairly new to being online. But once I realized how many problems I could face if some stranger was able to access some of my personal information, I really started to take it seriously. I think it’s best if you use a password that uses some unconventional symbols along with the usual alphabets and numbers. Using unusual sequences to form meaningless words also helps boost strength.
Few of my friends told their strategy that they have pattern for the password that they follow. I don’t know what that is but they said, they dont have to remember all passwords they just need to remember the pattern.
Your best off having a few passwords anyway.. Any website you login too can see what password you are using, so if your using the same for all of them registering on a forums will be giving away your email login info…
I keep my passwords simple but without my name or birthday in it.. ;p
Great post Adam. Proper selection of passwords to guard your accounts and programs is essential in today’s day and age.
- Robert
most of the time, people will use day of birth as password~
Thanks for this post
I really hate Long passwords & i know how easily hackers can hack small passwords like 12345, abcde, yourphone no, dateofbirth etc. So we should always be careful about our password. One suggestion we would like to add is always use your password with numeric & alphabetic mixx with minimum 6 to 10 characters. It wouldn’t be much difficult to remember password in between 6 – 10 characters (as we normally remember our friends mobile no). You should always use the same password for your top profiles so that you don’t have to remember so many passwords.