hey friends!
as you know I do a lot of reading and research to stay up to date with all that is going on in Social Media.
One of the most overlooked and critical things you need to do on line is to be sure and change your passwords every four months.
I recently read an article that I thought made it easy to create memorable, yet unique, passwords. Thought I would share it with you:
The secret is to make passwords memorable but hard to guess. Learning a few simple skills will make creating strong memorable passwords easy. Creating them can actually be fun – and your payoff in increased safety is huge.
First, look at a few weak passwords to understand why these put you at risk:
- Password - The word "Password" is the most commonly used password and it is pathetically weak – as are ’default’ and ’blank’. These are simple words and easily guessed or broken with a hacker program that uses a dictionary assault on the password.
- Marshall1968 - Though this uses 12 characters and includes letters and numbers, names that are associated with you or your family, or uses other identifying information such as birth year, are easily hacked.
- F1avoR - Though it mixes up capitols and numbers, it is too short and substituting the number 1 for the letter l is easy to guess.
To avoid these easy to guess or hack passwords try one or more of the following tricks:
Use a phrase and incorporate shortcut codes or acronyms: These examples let you use phrases that either mean something to you, or you associate with a type of website. For example, the ’all for one and one for all’ may be the password for a social networking site where it’s all about sharing. It could be phrase about money for a banking site, and so on.
- 2BorNot2B_ThatIsThe? (To be or not to be, that is the question – from Shakespeare)
- L8r_L8rNot2day (Later, later, not today – from the kids rhyme)
- 4Score&7yrsAgo (Four score and seven years ago – from the Gettysburg Address)
- John3:16=4G (Scriptural reference)
- 14A&A41dumaS (one for all and all for 1 – from The Three Musketeers, by Dumas)
Use passwords with common elements, but customized to specific sites: These examples tell a story using a consistent style so if you know how you write the first sections, and you’re on the login page for a site you’ll know what to add.
ABT2_uz_AMZ! (About to use Amazon)
ABT2_uz_BoA! (About to use Bank of America)
Protect yourself on line and be sure to add this information to do your to do list every 4 months
Make Money
Have Fun
Change Your Little Corner of the World
xo, lisa
Pwrd4Acct-$$ (Password for account at bank)
Pwrd4Acct-Fb (Password for account at Facebook)
