A Revisit to Passwords

I was reading a blog post by a woman who had to choose a new password for her blog because they old one had been hacked.  She had also had her debit card hacked.

This is the life we live in. If computers are going to make our lives easier and faster, it will also be true that some people will do harm through them.

I gave a post on creating passwords some time ago.  Since then I have learned a couple of things that will help keep your computer files and money saf-er.  No computer is entirely safe from hacking.  Even if you don’t have it hooked up to the Internet, someone could break into your house, steal the computer, and hack it later.  But passwords are great IF they are selected with some care.  For example:

These are people who have scammed people for a long time, but now can do it, mostly, from their home through computers. Most computers are fairly easy to be hacked, but you can deter them by using a password 12-20 characters long where you use at least 1 letter lower-cased, 1 letter upper-cased, 1 number, and 1 acceptable special character. Now, don’t make it your phone number or something like that. Ideally, it should have letters and characters on both sides of the keyboard and be a pretty random assortment of characters. Never reuse a password. And, when you do the secret questions, don’t use real answers, use ones that you will remember because they are ridiculous. “Where were you born?” Answer: elevator.

This is a very simple and fairly uncomplicated explanation of how to choose passwords.  If you have to write them down, fine, do it on a pencil/pen notebook and leave that notebook at home.  I have approximately 37 passwords and all of them follow the rules from above.  And you need to do the same for every password.  You never know what a person could learn if they hacked your “game” password.  Norton has a great program that “remembers” your passwords and encrypts them, putting them into the site when requested.  You can also view your passwords here to see what they are if you need to manually enter one.  Not foolproof, just good.  I am told that most hackers will not usually mess with your account if the password is up to speed.  Ideally, you should change them every 30 days.  The big reason for this is that if someone is working on getting into your account and is using password crackers, it is hopeful it will take them long enough to get your password that you have changed it.

The world is a rough place.  Why make it harder on yourself by having to deal with hackers and scams?

Namaste,

Scott