Things to keep in mind while creating strong passwords

Passwords are like underwear, don’t let people see it, change it very often, and you shouldn’t share it with strangers. If you are a school student, then you may have a chapter based on Cybersecurity which tells you about the cyber crime and security and recommend you to create strong password in order to avoid becoming a victim of a hacker, but the question arises here is why you should create strong password and is it necessary to have a strong password for your social accounts? The short answer is yes.

Strong passwords are important. They prevent unauthorized access to your electronic accounts and devices. If you choose a very complicated and long password, you will make it very difficult for a hacker to crack it by a brute force attack. Your password secures all of your information.

The most common method to crack a password is Brute Force attack. A brute-force attack consists of an attacker submitting many passwords or passphrases with the hope of eventually guessing correctly. Let’s look at some of the points which you should keep in mind while creating passwords.

1. Don’t use Dictionary Words as your Password.

So what do I mean by not using the dictionary words? If your password is a dictionary word, then even a script kiddie can hack into your accounts. You might think that your password is unique and no one can guess it, then you are certainly wrong. It doesn’t take very long for a hacker to guess your password. Even if you add numbers to your password, hackers can create a custom word list with the help of tools like Cewl and Crunch.

2. Never use a Numeric password.

Using a number password is really stupid and if you are using without any special characters then you are making it easy for a hacker to crack your password. Since there are only (0–9) digits, even a numbered password with 10 characters only amounts to 10 billion possibilities to brute-force.

Compare that to an eight-character all lowercase password with 208 billion combinations, and it would be 20 times easier to crack your 10-digit numerical password than the 8-character lowercase one.

If you are using your phone number as your password and if you have uploaded your phone number on the internet, it will not take very long for a hacker to gain information about you. So if you are using a numeric password, then you should definitely change your password.

3. Don’t use the same password on another account.

If you are a netizen, then I’m sure that you must have many social media accounts. Two information which almost every website asked is your Email ID and a password. If you are using the same password on every website, then your password is not secure. For example, you created an account on a new social media website, and they don’t secure their systems adequately, someone will hack their system and steal yours and all the other accounts’ passwords. The rule here is to use different passwords on different types of accounts. You might create one password for all of your highly confidential accounts, and one password for all the other accounts.

4. Don’t use your personal information in your password.

People use their personal information in their password so that they cannot forget their password, but this way of creating a password is a bad practice.

Don’t use your date of birth, your parents’, siblings’, cousin’s, distant cousin’s best friend’s cat’s date of birth either. You may have revealed such details on the internet, and as I told you before, it is not only easy for a hacker to gain such information but also for a normal person. If the hacker got such details, then they can easily create a custom word list, and it won’t take very long to crack your password. So think twice before using these personal information as your password.

If you must, use something that no one else knows, like the date that you last moved house. Also, make sure that it’s part of a longer chain, and that the keywords and numbers aren’t related.

5. Create a Passphrase.

A passphrase is a sequence of words or other text used to control access to a computer system, program, or data. It is similar to a password in usage, but a passphrase is generally longer for added security. Passphrases are easier to remember than a random of symbols and letters combined. Now the question is that how can u create strong passphrase. There are many articles on creating a good passphrase, but most of them don’t teach you the best way.

So I’ll teach you that how you can create a strong passphrase. First create a phrase that is meaningful to you. For example — Life is the flower for which love is the honey. Now, take that phrase and convert it into a single string of uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and special characters, like this one:

l1fe1sTh5Fl0w5rF0Rwh1ch>31tH5H0n5y

I’ve converted life into l1fe(I letter into 1), The into Th5 (E letter into 5), Flower into Fl0w5r, For into F0R (letter o into 0) which into wh1ch and love into >3, IS into 1S and Honey into H0n5y.

That’s really complex, but good passwords are complex so that a hacker can’t crack the password.

I hope this article helps you to create a strong password. If you’ve any question, then don’t be shy to post your questions in the comment section.