Why it’s absolutely crucial that you choose a strong password
We hear it all the time: make a strong password, ideally something so complex that even you won’t remember (well, it certainly seems that’s what they’re asking!). Its process that sees you end up with too many passwords to remember, which it seems to us to kind of defeat the purpose. And after all, who would really want to hack little old me? Do we really need such strong passwords?
How passwords get exposed (and why you shouldn’t reuse your password)
Hackers have developed a range of tools to get to your personal data. It’s actually relatively easy (if you know the online tools, which hackers do) to obtain personal information such as your partner, child, pet’s name, their date of births as well as addresses, your old schools and your favourite football team. And why would they want to get this information? Because statistically speaking, these are the most commonly used information to create passwords.
Hackers then use what is called a “brute-force attack” which targets the weakest link in any website’s security (namely human created passwords). It uses specially written software, to try usernames and passwords, over and over again, until it gets it. Seems difficult but not so hard when technology is doing it for you.
But how does the process actually work? Don’t sites like your bank have high levels of security that are prepared for these hackers? Yes, they do but if you reuse your password for lots of site (like a lot of people do) then hackers target those low-security sites like online forums or e-commerce to steal your password. Once they’ve got several login and password pairings they then go test them on targets sites – using information that is stored on your web browser’s cache. How long this takes depends on the length and complexity of your password – just adding one capital letter and a symbol to your password will change processing time for an eight-character password from 2.4 days to 2.1 centuries.
According to technology website geekbeat, these are the differences in processing times that hackers can guess your password.
There are many other ways that hackers can compromise your security and most of them stem from targeting passwords, especially weak passwords. So in order to be safe and not sorry, here are our tips to create a strong password:
- As we mention, simply varying the capitalisation or adding a symbol can strengthen your password dramatically. Randomly capitalise letters and substitute letters that look similar to symbols to make it easier to remember (for example an “o” becomes a “0”)
- Don’t choose people’s names or a word. People’s names and words from the dictionary can fail under brute force attacks
- Don’t use the same username and password combination for all your sites. As we mentioned before, hackers target weak sites to gain your password to compromise other sites.
Related links:
The worst passwords revealed. Are you guilty?
How to stop receiving unwanted emails
Online scams you need to know about