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Five Steps to a Safer Password

by Tim Stevens on November 13, 2007 at 12:16 PM

Five Steps to a Safer Password

We try to keep you abreast of the latest scams, whether they appear to come from MySpace or the U.S. Government. We also try to let you know about new viruses that might infect your machine with monitoring software capable of stealing the passwords to all your online accounts. These are all bad, of course, but if you're using a password so simple that someone can guess it after two or three tries, well, you may as well download all the viruses you can find.

To help, the British government has started a program called Get Safe Online to help keep folks in the U.K. from being statistics. Its recommendations range from software update advice to ways to secure your wireless network.

When it comes to passwords, to save you some time, Shiny Shiny has compiled the top five tips to a more secure account. They are:

  1. Your cat's name is not unique. Leave it alone. Ditto your name, your birthday, your mom's maiden name or your birthday.
  2. Don't use a dictionary word. They can be cracked with clever -- and even not-so-clever -- password hacking programs.
  3. Don't use Qwerty, one of the most popular passwords on the block. Consecutive letters are generally a no-no as they're easily guessed.
  4. Use a combination of upper and lower case, letters, and numbers. If non-alphanumeric symbols are permitted, throw a few of those in. Make it as nonsensical as possible, even to you. And if you do need to write it down, try not to do it on a piece of paper entitled Internet Banking Passwords...
  5. Now is not the time to be restrained. Many sites will have a minimum-character-length password, but few have a maximum. Length is in your favor as it increases the myriad of combinations that would have to be tried out before your password could be cracked.
These all jive pretty well with our own recommendations compiled earlier this year, where we list password as the number-one least-secure password ever, for obvious reasons. And no, Mr. Lazy, password1 isn't much better.

From Shiny Shiny

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Tags: Internet, password, scam, security, virus

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