What You Should Know About Strong Passwords

Strong passwords are so important when securing electronic accounts. Usually, passwords are the first line of defense in the protection against unauthorized access to your account. Nowadays, most account protection is multi-leveled, where you may have to provide answers to questions and more, in addition to inputting a password. However, this does not make having a strong password any less important. So, below are some helpful tips about making strong passwords that can really protect your electronic accounts.

First, the number of characters you use when making a password is extremely important. In the past, it has been recommended to include at least eight characters in your password. However, you could do much better than that. The more characters you use, the better. In fact, good, long passwords can take years and even decades to crack by programs instead of days or even hours. So, when making passwords, try to create ones that are as long as possible.

Well, what kind of characters should be included to strengthen your long password? In short, a wide variety should be used. If you use just letters of the alphabet, you have 26 choices for each character in the password. It is advised to use more than just letters. Using numbers adds ten more characters to your arsenal. But, you can do even more to create a secure password by adding symbols to it. These symbols include the !, ?, *, and more. We aren't done yet though. Using capital and lower case letters in conjunction means that the available choices from the alphabet are doubled from 26 to 52 characters. If you include a wide variety of letters, numbers, and symbols, you are off to a great start. However, there is still more to know about strong passwords.

It is common for many users to include full words in passwords. This is not a safe practice and should be avoided. Any word that can be looked up in a dictionary is dangerous to use. Instead, passwords can be formed from phrases. These are more secure as they are much more random and difficult to guess. For example, let us use the phrase: "Twinkle, twinkle, little star." You should avoid using the actual words twinkle, little, or star. You can, however, use the letters that make up the words. Using the first letters of each word, your base password could be "ttls." If you remember the phrase "Twinkle, twinkle, little star," then you could recall that your password was "ttls." From there, add numbers, symbols, and use upper and lowercase letters. What you end up with is a long, strong password that cannot easily be cracked by a program that has a database of words to use. Neither will a human that is trying to guess your password be able to, even if they know personal details about you that may be associated with your password. You can use numbers that have significance to you as this will allow you to more easily remember your password. But they should not be obvious numbers that hackers can deduce from knowing information about you.

Finally, a good tip is to not use any username you create for an account as part of your password. Sometimes, usernames are easy to find. Therefore, never include it as part of your password, because a hacker will almost definitely use that in trying to crack your password.

You are now well on your way to creating good, strong passwords. When making a password, keep all of these tips in mind and make sure you follow them. To summarize, your password should contain more than eight characters, make use of a variety of character types, not include words from any language, and not include your username. Doing this will help insure that your electronic accounts are safe from the hands of hackers.

For more information on strong passwords, malware protection, and general computer security, please visit WindowsVirusProtection.net. There you will find tips for keeping your system secure as well as other useful information pertaining to the fight against malware.