Keeping Your Accounts Secure

Odds are you have many online accounts that require passwords to access.  Odds are you use the same password for many of them. Odds are this could cause you problems at some point.

Many people today don't realize the importance of securing their online accounts.  Especially those that many contain sensitive information, such as your social security number or credit card information.  In fact, criminals today could even cause you great financial harm by just knowing your full name, address, and date of birth.

When choosing a password, there are several things to keep in mind.

1) Longer does not always equal better.  Just because your password is 16 digits long does not mean it is secure.  Especially if those 16 digits is from one long, common word, or even one long common word followed by a sequence of digits like 1234 or 1111.

2) You should make sure your password is a combination of letters and numbers, and symbols if allowed.  You should also use a series of upper and lower case letters when possible.  For example, pinkflower850 as a password is pretty weak that way, but if you modify it to PinKfloweR_850, it becomes reasonably safe.

3) You should try to make your password from NON-dictionary words.  That's from all languages.  So, using the same example above, even though we decided it was reasonably safe after we changed a few of the letter cases and added an underscore, it would become quite impenetrable if you also added a misspelling, like this: PynKflouwR_850.

Here's a table to explain further:

Some of the most common passwords (and easiest to hack) are listed below:


1. 123456
2. 123456789
3. 12345
4. Password
5. iloveyou
6. princess
7. 1234567
8. 12345678
9. rockyou
10. abc123

I really hope that none of these passwords are being used by you at this moment, but if so, or even if one of your passwords is similar to any of these, I would suggest you change it as soon as possible using the tips and ideas I gave you previously. Remember, an average-skilled hacker would be able to penetrate your account within minutes with certain software if your password is too simple.

Another good idea is to have separate passwords for different accounts in the event one of your accounts is compromised.  Often times people use the same password for multiple accounts, and hackers know this.  Therefore, having the same password for everything leaves you extremely vulnerable.

You might think, "But how the heck and I supposed to remember all those hard passwords!?"  Well, you don't have to memorize them.  A good way to keep up with all your different passwords is by using a program called a password manager. A very good one that I would recommend is called KeePass.  (You can download a copy by clicking here.)  It allows you to store all of your passwords in a highly-encrypted database right on your own computer.  I recently began using this program myself and have had a very good experience with it so far.

This will wrap up my article on keeping your accounts safe, and I hope you learned something that will help you in the future.  Before you go, please take a look at the image below for a few more safety tips.