Even though this last week, LinkedIn, eHarmony and Last.fm experienced password breach, many website users still pick easily cracked passwords.
6.5 million LinkedIn and about 1.5 million eHarmony subscribers had their password uploaded to Russian hacking forum , although security expserts suspected that many more website accunts may have been compromised.
While streaming website Last.fm didn’t disclose how many of its 40 million subscribers were affected.
Nevertheless, these three big websites has recomended that every users should change their passwords, just in case. But what is the best way to choose a password. Here are some 6 tips to consider.
1. PAY ATTENTION
Most people lack interest and enthusiasm, and are very lazy when choosing a password. Some people even uses password that are easily suggested by their counterparts. Pay attention and use something that is not easily suggested by anybody.
2. PICK UNIQUE PASSWORD
When creating a password, try to use different password for different websites, but try to be unique and be creative when choosing your password.
when hackers breaks a password in on a website, they quickly querry other websites to check correlations in user accounts and quickly test the password on it.
3. LOOK BEYOND THE LETTERS.
For stronger passwords, non alphabetical characters may be employed.
4. AVOID BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS.
Do not use a public detail about yourself to build a password, like your phone number, the name of your spuose or close relation. they are the most easily cracked set of passwords.
5. USE LONGER PASSWORDS
If possible, you can develop a sentence to use as your password. Hackers make childsplay of shorter passwords, e.g, a 5-letter password has 10 billion possible combinations, this made it possible to be cracked within 5 seconds, compare to 6 characters (500 seconds), 7 letters (13 hours), and 8 characters (57 days).
6. USE PASSWORD MANAGERS
Choosing a long string is the best way of creatong a secure password. Password managers are very good at generating very secure strings. Examples of password managers you can choose include, LifeHacker, Kaspersky Password Manager 4, RoboForm Desktop 7, IronKey Personal S200 and the likes.
