Choosing the Right Password
Posted by admin | Posted in Your New Business | Posted on 07-03-2010
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If you are like most of us, you find yourself doing more and more activities online, from buying to banking to chatting, you know already that you have to protect yourself and your information. Strong passwords are important protections to help you have safer online transactions.
For the strongest password, you need to find the right complex combination of characters that is individual to you alone. Most sites recommend using at least 8 and up to 14 characters or more in the greatest variety you can.
Here is a great chart that offers several key ideas that you might not have thought of to create your best password:
| What to do | Suggestion | Example |
| Start with a sentence or two (about 10 words total). | Think of something meaningful to you. | Long and complex passwords are safest. I keep mine secret. (10 words) |
| Turn your sentences into a row of letters. | Use the first letter of each word. | lacpasikms (10 characters) |
| Add complexity. | Make only the letters in the first half of the alphabet uppercase. | lACpAsIKMs (10 characters) |
| Add length with numbers. | Put two numbers that are meaningful to you between the two sentences. | lACpAs56IKMs (12 characters) |
| Add length with punctuation. | Put a punctuation mark at the beginning. | ?lACpAs56IKMs (13 characters) |
| Add length with symbols. | Put a symbol at the end. | ?lACpAs56IKMs” (14 characters) |
(source microsoft.com)
Do use different passwords for your different accounts and websites, but be sure your passwords are easy to remember. If you have a secure work station, do write them down somewhere where only you have access to them. DO not carry any passwords in your wallet, purse, PDA, or appointment book. Please do not store them on your computer! Never share your password or email a password to anyone (and beware if someone asks you to email your password to them!) and never use your password on a public computer, as in a library or at a Wifi station.
Never use:
- Your birthdate
- Any relative’s birthdate
- Your social security number
- Any relative’s social security number
- Any actual words from the dictionary (any language)
- Words spelled backwards, misspelled or abbreviated
- Relative’s names
- Pet’s names
- Address, phone number, zip code, drivers license number
- Something that would be easily identifiable to you such as your favorite color, movie, song, etc
- Sequences or repeated characters or numbers
- Adjacent characters on a keyboard
It is recommended you change your passwords regularly. Change passwords to very sensitive access sites every 3 to 6 months.
Several sites offer ways to check the strength of your password. You can check yours with Microsoft’s password checker by clicking here.
