Test the Strength of Your Passwords
Your passwords are the keys you use to access personal information that you've stored on your computer and in your online accounts.Sometimes you may not think the password to your webmail account is valuable. But if someone can access your account and they can use it to send spam and ruin your online reputation. More seriously, you may not cautious , when you are using same password at an online banking site, PayPal, or a site where your credit-card number is stored for easy ordering, such as Amazon
But, it is not hard to create strong passwords and keep them well protected.The strength of a password is a function of length, complexity, and randomness.
What makes a strong password
To an attacker, a strong password should appear to be a random string of characters. The following criteria can help your passwords do so:
- Make it lengthy. Each character that you add to your password increases the protection that it provides many times over. Your passwords should be 8 or more characters in length; 14 characters or longer is ideal.Many systems also support use of the space bar in passwords, so you can create a phrase made of many words (a "pass phrase"). A pass phrase is often easier to remember than a simple password, as well as longer and harder to guess.
- Combine letters, numbers, and symbols. The greater variety of characters that you have in your password, the harder it is to guess. Other important specifics include:
•The fewer types of characters in your password, the longer it must be. A 15-character password composed only of random letters and numbers is about 33,000 times stronger than an 8-character password composed of characters from the entire keyboard. If you cannot create a password that contains symbols, you need to make it considerably longer to get the same degree of protection. An ideal password combines both length and different types of symbols.
•Use the entire keyboard, not just the most common characters. Symbols typed by holding down the "Shift" key and typing a number are very common in passwords. Your password will be much stronger if you choose from all the symbols on the keyboard, including punctuation marks not on the upper row of the keyboard, and any symbols unique to your language.
Whether you password is strong enough ?, check it here
0 comments