PeterWallace
“Treat your password like your toothbrush. Don’t let anybody else use it, and get a new one every six months.” -Clifford Stoll
Why are strong passwords needed?
Good computer security includes the use of strong passwords for all your accounts. Passwords can be the weakest link in a computer security scheme. Strong passwords are important because password cracking tools continue to improve and the computers used to crack passwords are more powerful. Network passwords that once took weeks to break can now be broken in hours.
Password cracking software uses one of three approaches: intelligent guessing, dictionary attacks, and automation that tries every possible combination of characters. Given enough time, the automated method can crack any password. However, it still can take months to crack a strong password.
For a password to be strong and hard to break, it should:
Do NOT use:
Try to change your password(s) frequently.
When typing in your password, make sure no one is watching you type. Ask anyone around you to kindly look away.
Also the top 20 most common password are as follow. Is yours among them?
You will notice how many people have apparently used their first names as passwords. Number 7 the password is simply the name of the site.
I advise users to choose a strong password for sites you care for the privacy of the information you store. If you’re concerned about being able to remember the code, here’s a little memory-jogging trick: Take a sentence and turn it into a password. Something like ‘This little piggy went to market’ might become ‘tlpWENT2m.’”