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Each day, our lives become more inseparable from the internet; we email instead of call, we stay in touch with social media, we shop online, bank online, etc. And each of our online accounts requires a password. We all know that choosing a strong password is important for internet security, but nonetheless many of us opt for weak passwords simply because they are easier to remember and keep track of. While it is inconvenient to create very strong passwords, the potential fallout from having your accounts hacked will be much more inconvenient. Don’t worry; after reading this article, you’ll be a pro when it comes to knowing whether a password is strong, and we’ll give you a handy secure password generator to take some of the guesswork out of creating a strong password.
Here are the top cybersecurity factors to make a strong password and accessing your accounts:
As with names, you shouldn’t use any numbers in your passwords that are easily discovered by hackers, including your date of birth, social security number, phone number, zip code, or anything similar. If you have trouble staying away from names and important numbers, PasswordsGenerator.com has a secure password generator that will take the guesswork out of it for you.
Turn off automatic passwords, auto-login, and password storage on your web browsers (IE, Firefox, Chrome, etc.) Any password stored in this way can be hacked.
A strong password is no good if you transmit it willy-nilly. Only send sensitive information if you’re on a secure connection. A secure connection will say either “HTTPS” (as opposed to HTTP) or “SFTP” (as opposed to FTP). These connections are encrypted and much more difficult to hack than their counterparts.
You can make sure your connections are encrypted when using your mobile devices by setting up a VPN (Virtual Private Network) on your home computer. Then, whenever you use your cell phone, tablet or laptop, connect to the VPN, and this will encrypt all the data that is leaving your mobile device so that hackers and hacking software can’t read it.
There are several password strength meters available online to check the strength of your passwords (make sure the site has https before the web address, not HTTP. Remember, “s” is for “secure”). One slightly different take that I like tells you the time it would take for different speed hacking programs to crack your password. It’s useful information to have, but take it with a grain of salt and make sure to read the note if you use this tool. These are great if you want to confirm the strength of passwords you got from our secure password generator.
The standard recommendation is to change your passwords every 8-12 weeks. If you’re using a good random password generator to create strong passwords all the time and storing them safely (see #13), then changing passwords regularly is a good security measure. If, however, changing passwords often will just make you go back to weaker, easy to remember passwords, like your pet’s name, don’t bother. It’s better to have a really strong password and keep it forever than to have a new weak password every 3 months.