I'm baaack!
Let's fire things up with a little free advice that everyone can use.
Here is how to create an easy to remember, secure password:
1. Don’t use personal information as a part of your password. Your last name, pet's name, child's birth date, your childhood nickname, the name of the college you went to, and other personal data are just too easy for an intruder to guess.
2. Avoid any word that you can find in the dictionary. It takes very little time for a hacker to try every word in the dictionary, using automated cracking tools.
3. Use a combination of uppercase, lowercase and special characters, as well as numbers. Even the inclusion of one or two special characters makes the hacker’s job much more difficult.
4. Consider using a passphrase. Think up a sentence or a line from a song or poem that you like and create a password using the first letter from each word. Here’s an example: mH@11ifWwa$ is a very strong password, but looks very hard to remember. In fact it is the first initials of “Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow”, with @ substituted for a, 1 for the l and $ for the s at the end. Here is another: tQbf!oT1d --the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog, with ! for j and 1 for l.
Remember, a password is like the keys to your car. A good car thief can still get in and drive it away, but locking the door and taking the keys makes him work for it a little harder.
