Having awareness on how to protect your account helps keep your sensitive personal information safe from cybercriminals. While you can’t make your account invulnerable, you can take several security measures to protect your account.
So in this article, we will tackle good password etiquettes to apply on any website or application. Please take the following advice carefully and strengthen your password if it doesn’t pass.
1. Use a hard-to-guess password.
Use a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. Avoid using simple adjacent character combinations: for example, “qwerty”,”1234″ and “asdfgh.” If you can’t make a good combination, get help from password generators online but make sure it’s from a reputable source.
2. Use a complex password but easy to memorize.
One way for creating a complex but easy to memorize passwords is to create acronyms, shortcuts, Emojis, and symbols from your favorite phrase. Let’s say if your phrase is “I’m Confidently Beautiful with a Heart at 50!” the password becomes “I’mCBw/a<[email protected]!”.
Another technique is to create a password in other languages to add complexity to a password.
3. Use longer passwords.
These days, computers are constantly becoming more powerful and affordable. When it runs a password cracking program, it can generate millions or even billions of password guesses per second using a technique known as brute-force.
In this regard, always remember, length is key – the longer the password, the harder it takes to crack. Thus, the ideal length should be 10 characters or more.
4. Change your password frequently.
Many are hesitant about this and they don’t realize yet the importance of changing passwords regularly. Others may seem it’s inconvenient for them to create a new password.
One way to make sure you regularly update your passwords is by preparing a schedule using a calendar app. It could be monthly, quarterly or bi-annually, depends on your preference.
The main purpose of this is to prevent someone guesses your password and let him give up trying.
5. Do not use words from the dictionary.
Another password cracking technique uses dictionary words to guess a password. Thus, avoid picking a password that contains words from the dictionary.
6. Do not pick passwords about your identity.
Avoid picking passwords related to yourself, such as your birth date, your address, your phone, credit card, or social security number, or names of your family members.
7. Use a different password for all sensitive websites and apps.
Using the same password for most of your accounts (such as e-mail, social media, and online shopping) is a very bad practice.
If you’re using the same password across different websites or applications holding sensitive personal data and one of those suffered a security breach, there’s a good chance that your other accounts will also face the same risk of being breached too.
8. Do not email or share your password.
There are still some users who email or send their passwords via communication channels. Another very bad practice you should avoid.
9. Use a password manager.
Many online services can keep your sensitive passwords safe like 1Password, Dashlane, LastPass, and Passpack that store passwords in the cloud and secure those with a master password.
Other services provide local password storage application (offline) on your devices such as KeePass, Lazlock, PasswordSafe, and Roboform.
Again, make sure to choose a memorable but strong master password, just follow our suggested techniques here.
10. Use two-factor authentication (2FA) when available.
If you enable two-factor authentication on your account and it so happens that someone got your password, he can’t use that password yet to gain access to your account. Simply because 2FA acts as an extra layer of security for your account making sure that you’re the only person who can access your account. Instead of only entering a password, you will also need to enter a code which is sent to a mobile number you registered in your account.
Final Thoughts
Those etiquettes provided are generally easy to understand and follow. Having good password etiquette will also help you avoid the risk of other online crimes such as identity and financial theft.
If you would like to have an idea of how strong your password is, visit this website: https://howsecureismypassword.net and check your password strength there.