As you might know a password that contains eight or hewer small case letters are the weakest ones. A password with 11 characters including lower case and capital letters, digits and special characters are the strongest ones you could choose for your account.
To get you a more clear idea about how long it might take a clever hacker to hack the passwords, we are giving you an example.
• A short password made up of six random lower case letters - a fraction of a second.
• A long password made up of 11 random lower case letters - 11 hours.
• A long password made up of 11 random lower and upper case letters - two and a half years.
• A long password made up of 11 random lower and upper case letters, numbers and special characters - 500 years.
What can we do to prevent this hacking?
It is true that we cannot erase the hackers. They exist and they will continue their job. The only option that is left to us is to decrease the speed of tracing out your password. For that, take some tips:
1. Never use your personal information as your password. We agree that those are the easiest ones to remember. But keep in mind, if the hacker is someone whom you know very well and who knows you very well, he can easily guess the password. The name of your spouse, your child, your pet, your date of birth, your favorite writer, color, book, actor, movie etc are very easily guessable passwords.
2. Do not use simple common passwords. ABCD, 1234, 5678 etc are so easy to remember. But they are also so easy to find out too. Some people have the tendency to take ‘password’ as their password. Avoid such simple and common word/digits. Avoid simple substitutions too. For example, using ‘pa55word’.
3. Avoid using single words or pairs of words right from the dictionary. These hackers of nowadays will have complex software with which they can easily find out the words from the dictionary.
4. Always use long passwords. Do not hesitate to make it longer just because you are too lazy or hasty to type that long a word. Try to have at least 11 or 12 characters if not 15.
5. It is always advisable to use a mixture of lower case and upper case letters, digits and special characters. That could be the best password one could choose.
6. Try to use a sentence or an abbreviation that you can easily remember and mix the capitals and smalls well. Add one or two digits in between and put some special characters like ‘!’ or ‘?’.
7. Do not try to change your password so often. It is advisable to change it occasionally, but if you change the password often, there are chances that you might forget your last password soon.
8. If you have so many accounts and it’s too hard for you remember all the passwords, you can use password manager programmes. There are a plenty available on internet. You can keep your passwords encrypted there.
9. Use different passwords for different sites.
Keep these tips in your mind and choose a password wisely.
Best of Luck!
