A lot of people still underestimate how important a password is to them, and an even larger population of people underestimate how sophisticated hackers have become; therefore, being able to crack even some mildly complex passwords easily. Here we will go over a few ways to make your passwords more secure.
1. Avoid the use of personal information: A lot of people fall victim of this (I was one of them), you see the field the input your password, and you immediately think “oh yeah, John1985.” This is very wrong, and this is one of the easiest types of passwords to guess even without the use of sophisticated hacking software or algorithm. Your personal information like your name and birthday can easily be found online, so, stay clear of these.
2. Regular words: We can be so lazy in creating our passwords that most of us just go with the first thing that comes to mind. I guess I can blame you for making your password “applejuice” right after you had some apple juice. However, you need to be aware of how dangerous this kind of action can be to your sensitive information that your password was meant to protect. Algorithms designed by hackers always go guessing for regular words first (cause they know how predictable people can be). You should, therefore, use words like “gahdaybragah,” now that is a type of password that hackers might have trouble cracking (try to remember it though).
3. Word length: If your password is 3 letters long, it will take a brute force hacking software about a second to crack it. You need to make sure that your password to reduce the possibility of hackers getting a hold of it. Imagine a password like this “gahbraddaygbeghewhyylohhaey,” good luck trying to crack anything like that anytime soon, but is it that secure though. No! It’s not, discover why in the next point.
4. Combine multiple character types: At the end of the day, a password hacking software has to be written by a human, and there is only so much of disparity we can account for; this is why you should combine all sorts of characters in your password. Use numbers, letters, and symbols all together to make it infinitely harder for a hacker to guess or hack your password. You can even substitute some of the letters with symbols that look like them. Examples are @ for ‘A,’ $ for ‘S,’ and so on. You should get a password like this “GR@fh0gS”. Oh, and remember that you can play around with upper- and lower-case letters too.
5. Use a password manager: please, as tempting as this might be, do not use just one password for every single thing in your life. You should try to spice things up, just like in a relationship. Use different passwords for different accounts and profiles that you need to log into. I understand that it can become really overwhelming to remember multiple passwords (I start to forget the moment they are up to two), and this is why you should use password managers. Password managers make it easy for you to not remember your passwords and still be able to use them. One prevalent one is the Google password manager