Creating A Password

Millions of accounts are made each and every day.  These accounts include social media like Facebook and Twitter, personal financial information like bank accounts and work accounts.  With this many accounts coming at you from every direction, it oftentimes seems like the easy approach to create a universal password for all the accounts.  Yet, if this password were stolen, decoded or just plain guessed; how much damage could a single person be able to inflict if they essentially held your entire life or company’s life in their hands?

This made me wonder what were the common pitfalls in making a password and what steps can be utilized to prevent any of them being stolen in the first place.  Some advice when creating a password includes:

1. Use a different password for each account
2. Use a minimum of 12 characters
3. Replacing I’s with 1’s and a’s with @’s is easily cracked
4. Don’t use personal information such as dog or cats name
5. If possible make a passphrase instead of a password
   1. Example: “goodluckguessingthispassword” instead of “password1234”
6. If you have some variation of these passwords, change it as soon as possible
   1. 123456
   2. password
   3. qwerty
   4. football
   5. baseball
   6. 123456789

Link: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/may/21/how-create-perfect-password-hackers-online-accounts-safe

Collinson, Patrick. “How to Create the Perfect Password.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 21 May 2016. Web. 22 Jan. 2017.