Creating Good Passwords

Why is it important to create a good password?

According to one study, the average person has about 90 online accounts. This can range from
accounts for banks to ecommerce websites like Amazon and email addresses. Each one of
these accounts require a password in order to protect your information… and your MONEY!

If you use a weak password for each account, or even worse… reuse the same weak password,
you risk hackers accessing your money, information, and identity.

Today hackers are able to use software that can guess your password at the rate of billions of
guesses each second. It is important to create passwords that are difficult for computers to
guess

How to make a good password?

Dos and Don’ts…

Do:
Create a password that is difficult for someone to guess. Incorporate symbols and upper and
lowercase.

Don’t:
Create a password that is too obvious. Avoid names, dictionary words and common phrases.

Do:
Create a password that is long. Try for at least 8 characters. A password with 8 characters has
approximately 85 million times the possible combinations than a password of just 4 characters.
This makes it much harder for hackers to guess.

Don’t:
Create a password that is too short. A short password can be broken quicker.

Do:
Create a password that you can remember. It doesn’t matter how complex a password is if you
can’t remember it.
Don’t:
Create a password that is too complex to remember. (Unless you use a password manager
which is mentioned later).

Try these tricks:

Some people suggest using a password made up of 4 random words. For example:
clamchindogname. This password will be difficult for hackers to guess because it is so long.
However it can be very easy to remember.

Another trick that is a little more complicated, but a little more secure, is to think of a sentence.
For example “A library is a great place to learn.” The sentence can be converted into a
password like this: “Alibisagpla2le”. This was created by selecting the ​first letter of adjectives​,
the ​first 2 for verbs​ and the ​first 3 for nouns​: ​A​ ​lib​rary ​is​ ​a gr​eat ​pla​ce to ​le​arn and then to
was changed for the number 2 and then the password becomes “Alibisagrpla2le”. By
remembering the sentence and the rule used to create the password, you have a password that
is memorable and very difficult for a hacker to guess. This is just an example, any sentence and
any rule can be used.

Other tools:

Password managers are a great tool to use is a password manager. A password manager is an
application that stores all of your passwords and can only be accessed by a complex password.
This way you only have to remember one password, which means you can used a unique,
complex password for each website that you use and not have to worry about remembering
them. There are many available today, ranging from free, to monthly subscriptions. One popular
one is Lastpass, but many more can be found with a simple google search. There are also
many resources on how to set them up.

https://boingboing.net/2014/02/25/choosing-a-secure-password.html

https://lifehacker.com/four-methods-to-create-a-secure-password-youll-actually-1601854240