Passwords............a pain in the neck.

Passwords are used every day to gain access to personal information e.g. email, banking, online shopping. In the past we were told to use something that is easy to remember. A combination of names or places, perhaps put a date with it, but something that you can remember without writing it down. As with many things, the recommendations have changed. Standard guidance given on selecting secure passwords is to use a combination of letters and numbers. This is a task ideally suited to a computer generated process.

“The PC Tools Password Generator (link at bottom of the page) allows you to create random passwords that are highly secure and extremely difficult to crack or guess due to an optional combination of lower and upper case letters, numbers and punctuation symbols.”

 It will even let you choose what different types of combinations you might want to use, since some sites have specific requirements. Now, this will also makes the pass words harder to remember, so we are starting to recommend writing them down. You see that I used the word 'Them"? Too many people are using one password for all or most of their accounts. This makes it easier for you to remember, but it also means that if someone cracks your password, they can now get into all of your accounts. The larger threat is not the person sitting at your desk and “breaking” into your accounts, it’s the person logging into your account from their own laptop down at Starbucks. Is your pass word your dog or cats name? Think you might have talked about your pet of Facebook? Or posted a lot of pictures? There is a good chance that the answers to your “Security Questions” can be answered by reading your profile on a social network.


So, take the few extra seconds needed to have a “real” password and help keep your privacy.

Stay Safe,
Oram Security

http://www.pctools.com/guides/password/