Good passwords are like good friends. When someone tries to get to you through your passwords, a good one will have your back and protect you.
You probably see articles like this all the time. If you haven’t paid attention to them, try this one. If you are using short passwords, one word passwords, number only passwords, etc, you are putting yourself at real risk.
Here are 5 ways you can boost your password game.
1. Stop using single word passwords.
Do you think someone is sitting there typing out your passwords trying to guess? No, it’s normally a computer program that can cycle through enormous amounts of dictionary words in seconds. It will not take long to get into your account.
2. Use pass phrases instead of pass words.
That makes them long but easy to remember. Capitalize the words in the phrases as well. Then you can throw in numbers and special symbols and not have to worry about looking back and forth at your notes. For instance:
FarmerDonkeyTankDog#2017
Here’s a neat cartoon from XKCD about this method:
3. Don’t use the same password for multiple accounts.
This should go without saying but I know how tempting it is to use the same password for many accounts because it’s easy to remember that way. Unfortunately, that means if a thief gets your school or work password, they then also have your bank and credit card passwords.
4. Make your passwords much longer.
This goes along with point 2 above but if you are averse to using passphrases then make sure that you are making your password longer than required. If the requirements say at least 8 characters, make it 12. Most places will now require that you use a combination of Capital and lower case letters along with numbers and a special character so that will be simple enough to do.
5. Consider using a password manager.
There are many password managers available for you to choose from. Big names like Lastpass, Dashlane, Bitwarden, and more. You can come up with one strong special password to remember for access to the password manager and then let the program decide what password to assign to everything else. It’s much easier to keep up with!
Here at ILJMail.com, we require a good password, but you can make it even better and more memorable by following some of the steps above!
Check out what ILJMail.com has to offer and get a private email account at a fun domain! We have several domains to choose from. ILJ Mail doesn’t run any ads, is not on any ad networks, and does not sell your personal data.
