4 Tips To Keep Your Passwords Safe

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook had his Twitter, Pinterest accounts hacked into last week. Keep yourself safe from hackers by following these 4 tips!

1. Don’t constantly re-use your password

Now this is a bad habit that’s pretty hard to kick. A lot of us have about 2 or 3 passwords that we re-use across multiple websites. The problem with this? Well the moment one of your accounts have been hacked, you’ve effectively been hacked across a few websites. This is especially painful if you’ve been using the same password on all your accounts, since you may get hacked on a less secure site – which you may not care about – and pay the price when you realize an account you care about – on a more secure site – gets hacked.

2. Create A Password Based On Random Sentences Only You Can Remember

The Schneir method, described by the original creator – Bruce Schneier – as a way to create passwords that are hard to guess, this is a pretty simple process to create and remember passwords. Basically take a sentence that you may use in your day to day life – but isn’t commonly used by others, or in literature – and convert it into a password!

An example of this would be: I Hate Programming On PhoneGap But I Have to

This would then become: IHPOPgapBIH2

The idea behind this is that most passwords are cracked using a hackers pre-existing knowledge of the users information, like date of birth, names, spouse’s name etc. This method helps you to generate a truly random password.

For more on this, read the original creator – Bruce Schneier’s posts on the topic at

http://boingboing.net/2014/02/25/choosing-a-secure-password.html

https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2008/11/passwords_are_not_br.html

3. Consider using a Password Manager

The best way to keep all your passwords for all your platforms in check? Use a password manager! Using a password manager allows you to remember just one password for all your accounts. This password allows you to login and access your other accounts. Meanwhile passwords for all your accounts can be generated using random patterns and then stored within that system.

For a great password manager, see https://lastpass.com/lastpassfour/

4. Be Careful Of Secret Questions

Most websites that require a password have a forgotten password link. Some of these require that you answer a secret question that would allow you to reset your password. The problem with this? Well most websites have a pre-created list of secret questions that hackers can crack much easier than your actual password.

Some sample secret questions may include:

• What is your mother’s maiden name?
• What is the name of your first pet?
• What is the first name of your spouse?

The problem with this is that all of this information can be found with a cursory search on facebook. All a hacker would need to do is take a look at your Facebook page and he’d be able to find all of this information.

The solution? Simple, hide this information on your social media and when filling up this information on a site, use the Schneier method as described above.

There is of course no password that is un-hackable, hackers can still use a brute force method to find your password, the only thing we can hope to do is to make our passwords less predictable, making it less worth their time to crack them in the first place. We hope you’ve enjoyed our article on the 4 tips to keep your password safe, if you disagree with anything we’ve said, leave a comment below! Think what we’ve written is worth a share? Share thiss with your friends and family on Facebook and Twitter!