The password is the key that makes our important account secure. It protects your social media accounts, email accounts, or any other web accounts on the internet. So we must take care of the security of our passwords. We also know that hackers are really active these days and they always try to grab the passwords of innocent users. So we must know some tips to make a strong password.
How does a password gets hacked?
Before you know how to create a strong password, you should also know how hackers generally hack different accounts. It will give you an idea of what hackers do and what you could do to avoid hacking of your account. There are some common methods of hacking an account.
Brute force attack: This attack uses a script that keeps on trying different character combinations. There are tools that can perform thousands of guesses in a second. The shorter a password in length, the easier it is to hack using the Brute Force attack. Anything under 8 characters is vulnerable to being cracked.
Dictionary attack: Dictionary attack is actually a brute force attack but it tries a predefined dictionary of passwords in place of making random passwords using characters and numbers. If you are using a common word or phrase as a password, your password isn’t safe.
Phishing: Phishing is also a popular way of hacking passwords. But your strong password cannot help you if you fell for a phishing email. Phishing pages look like original pages where you enter credentials thinking it to be the original page, but it actually sends your password to the hacker.
How To Create Strong Password
Follow these tips to make a strong password
- Long passwords are stronger, so make your passwords long. It must be at least eight characters long.
- Avoid using those words which are easy to guess. Never use the name of your father, or mother, or the name of your pet. Don’t use your personal info, phone number, license number or anything easy to guess.
- Try to have a strong and difficult password. Password must be the combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols (such as !, #, *).
- Don’t use common words & patterns. Avoid using phrases like “password” or “letmein”. Don’t use Keyboard patterns like “asdfghjk” or “11345678”.
- In casse you want a strong password, you can use our random password generator tool. It generates a random password that is hard to crack and hard to remember as well. So, you need to note it in a safe place. You can use a password manager for keeping all your passwords safe.
In case you find it hard to create a strong password, you can check strong password generator.
Now you know how to create a strong password. But you should also know how to keep it safe.
There are some additional tips for you to follow
- Never use the same password for all your accounts and make it different from the previous password. This is the most important thing to care about. Use different passwords for your Hotmail. Facebook, or any other web account.
- Never share your password with anyone. Password must be secret only up to you.
- Try to identify phishing pages and never give passwords to phishing pages. Always give the password in the valid login pages so check for the URL. The phishing URL will have a different domain name.
One thing I want to repeat again with a detailed explanation. Do not use the same password on any other website. Even if you are using a strong password, using the same password in multiple locations can also hurt you. People may use the leaked password on other websites as well.
If you have trouble remembering multiple passwords, you should start using password manager software or apps.
LinkedIn was hacked back in 2012 and millions of passwords were leaked. Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg was also among the affected users. Hackers tested the same password on Pinterest and managed to hack Zuckerberg’s Twitter and Pinterest account.
You should not make the same mistakes. Most of the users lose their accounts just because of it. These are some security tips that must be followed by all users to ensure their account security.