How to Create a Stronger Password
The easiest way to create a strong password is to use the first letter of a Memorable Phrase or Mnemonics. It may be a verse from a poem or a line from a movie. However something specific to your personal life may be a better choice.
For example the first letter of a phrase like, “Danny’s mom Jean enjoys high tea at 430“ will give us a password that looks like this: DmJehta430
This is an example of a strong password with a mix of uppercase letters, lowercase letters and numerals. To make it stronger, special characters such as ! $ % ^ & may be used.
Make your password at least 8 characters long. The longer your password the better it is.
Remember to rotate between a few good passwords and do not use the same password on all the different sites. No matter how strong, it is never safe to use just the one.
Shortlist:
- Memorable Phrase or Mnemonics
- Uppercase Letters
- Lowercase Letters
- Numerals
- Special Characters
Tips for a Stronger Password
It’s especially important to have a separate password for an email account, says Mozilla’s Mr. Sterne. Many sites have “Forgot my password” buttons that, when clicked, initiate a password-recovery process by email. Hackers who break into an email account can then intercept those emails and take control of each account registered using that address.
“Having the same password for everything is like having the same key for your house, your car, your gym locker, your office,” says Michael Barrett, chief information-security officer for online-payments service PayPal, a unit of eBay Inc.
by Stu Woo
Provided by The Wall Street Journal via Yahoo
Related Article: 3 FREE Password Managers
8 Ways to Protect Yourself from Email Breach
Another major hacker attack last week exposed the names and emails of millions of consumers to cyber criminals — and you might be on the list.
“As a practical matter, you can’t get out of all of the massive data banks that hold your personal data. Even the names of people who opted out might be retained. But you can do your best to minimize your risk.”
Click to Read 8 Ways to Protect Yourself From Email Breach at CBS.com’s MoneyWatch by Jane Bryant Quinn
Online Security Tips
- ALWAYS, always use an antivirus program on your computer. Always. Yes, even a Mac.
- Backup, backup,backup,backup. That means an external hard drive (or portable hard drive). If you start out by saving all your files to an external hard drive, when you lose your computer all your files are still safe.
- Get another external hard drive and then backup all your files to it. If the first hard drive fails (and they sometimes do through no fault of your own) you still have all your files backed up.
- Be discriminating about links. You don’t know where they’ve been.
Watch for the next post on the top 3 Antivirus Software.
Alert: Kama Sutra Trojan via PowerPoint Presentation?
“A new malware campaign is camouflaging its dangerous payload in the guise of a PowerPoint presentation showing 13 explicit Kama Sutra sexual positions, according to the security firm Sophos. With names like “The Frog,” “Wheelbarrow” and “Lyons Stagecoach,” the PowerPoint is certainly not safe for work.
…. But while they’re viewing the provocative pornographic pics, a backdoor Trojan called “Troj/Bckdr-RFM” is hard at work, automatically and inconspicuously planting malicious software on the victim’s system.”
Diet Pill Scammers Pretend to be News Channel(s)
By News 8 Reporter Craig McKee
‘…But If you take the time to really look at the site, you will notice something I missed and Mitch pointed out: the word “advertorial” posted at the very top of the page.
“That’s their way of covering their bases, saying hey we’re not faking a news organization, this is an advertorial piece tied to a made-up Channel 8, which just happens to be in San Diego, of course,” Gruber said.’
For Spammers
Yes, we go through every comment and delete spam. For example, 303 today alone.
Yes, you are trying to promote your website/business. Understandable. Therefore, if you would like to exchange links, please send us a proper email. No adult links, please. There are other venues for that so take advantage of those instead of antagonizing business owner and readers who are looking for something else.
Thank you.
Online Life Made Easier: Password Managers
Password Managers are a very easy way to keep track of the many passwords you may have for all your online accounts. If you’re a small business owner, then you probably have a Facebook account, a Twitter account, a blog account and a website hosting account.
While some of us can remember the password to most of our accounts thanks to regular use and a helmet, sometimes other accounts are accessed on a periodic basis. Information that is not used and reused regularly may fade away (apparently a normal brain functions in this manner). A good password manager can help thus freeing up valuable brain space for other important details (Fine. Apparently a normal brain doesn’t quite work this way).
Free Password Managers
1. FireFox–Built-In Password Manager
If you read our blog entry on the three best browsers (to date), then you are probably using FireFox as your default browser while relegating IE to the background. If you haven’t read that blog entry, then you should. Really. Go ahead. We will wait here for you to finish.
Did you know that Firefox has a built-in password manager? We’re sure you did and probably use it too, unless you are still using IE that also has a password manager. We don’t trust IE’s security measures so the less said the better.
If you are using the password manager in Firefox just remember to set a master password. Otherwise it would be very easy for anyone who has access to your computer to copy all the passwords you have saved. For easy tips on creating a strong password click here to read the previous post.
2. KeePass
Unfortunate choice of names but a good Password Manager nevertheless. It has strong security features and also free. We also like that it is open source.
Their amusing write-up of the encryption algorithms warranted a copy/paste, so here you go.
- Even if you would use all computers in the world to attack one database, decrypting it would take longer than the age of the universe.
- Even quantum computers won’t help that much. The algorithms are symmetric so its complexity would be reduced a bit, anyway, the sun will go nova before you have decrypted the database. http://keepass.info/features.html
Newbies (beginners) who don’t want to download anything extra will need to be on Windows Vista and higher (to use version 2x).
3. LastPass
There are two versions, free and premium.
Features for the free version allow users to:
- Securely synchronize data across all devices.
- Automatically Fill Forms–Set up multiple ‘profiles’ and automatically fill your personal information into web forms accurately and safely.
- Store secure notes
- Easily Import existing passwords from Internet Explorer, Firefox, and other Password Managers (We love this option) https://lastpass.com/features_free.php
Do you use a Password Manager that is indispensable to you? Share it with us in the comment box below.
Creating a Strong Password
To be honest, you don’t have to create a strong password. No one is forcing you to do that. This is completely within your control. Absolutely. However, we would like to take this opportunity to warn you that there are numerous password cracking software out there. An alarming number of these are free too, quite a few of these actually work.
What does this mean? It means your angry ex-wife, neighbor, brother, sister, stepbrother, stepsister, cousin, former boyfriend, current control freak of a boyfriend, former-but-now-snooping-girlfriend, current-girlfriend-with-trust issues, or current girlfriend-number-two-with-trust-issues-for-a-very-good-reason would all be able to–given some time and a little bit of effort–crack your password and gain access to your email or other personal accounts.
We can picture the scene now. Follow along, dear reader. Your life. In Pieces. All around you.
Everybody has received a copy of those emails you desperately didn’t want anyone other than the recipient to read. Even your old classmate from kindergarten, the kid that ate your blue crayons every chance she got, yes, that kid, even that person now all grown up got a copy of those emails. The horror. The shame.
This devastating scenario could have been prevented.
If only you had read this article sooner and created a good, strong password. Now your life is a shambles. You might as well dig a hole and stay there till an asteroid hits Earth killing everyone who knows your shame.
Fortunately for you all this hasn’t yet happened and happily, we have a solution. A preemptive strike in the right direction!
Create a strong password. We are not saying a strong password will always, always keep a determined someone out. It just takes a little longer and if you are good about changing your password every now and then, well it will take them a little longer than the little longer we mentioned at the start of this very long sentence.
Step 1. Character. For example @. Or ( or !
Step 2. Numerals eg, 9 2
Step 3. CAPITAL/BLOCK LETTERS.
Step 4. lower case letters
Characters, Numerals, Capital/Block Letters, Lower Case Letters make for a strong password [Sometimes you are only allowed alphabets and numerals in which case ditch the Characters]
Please don’t try something like 1L0v3Y0u. If you do, well hey it’s your password and perhaps somewhere deep inside or even floating casually at the surface of your psyche is a need to share embarrassing emails with everyone in your address book. But for those who want some security something like 1L0v3Y0u is easy to crack.
Try something with meaning to you but appears meaningless to others. For example I m n A 4 a 0 4 2 2 [Please don't use this exact password, we believe it's taken]
Meaningless, right?
It’s actually the first letters of I am an Atheist for always
followed by the ex-wife’s birth date. It’s a mnemonic code.
Nobody cares if he/she/you are an atheist but it has meaning to you and you alone.
So the choices are Life in Ruins from an “amateur Hacker” or Creating a Strong Password. We will let you decide.
Come back for the next post where we will give you a list of 5 free Password Managers to make your life a little easier.