Change Your Password Often, for the Hackers are Playing Around

In this real world where we live, there are so many anti social elements to make our life miserable. A similar state of affairs exists now in our virtual world or the cyber world or the internet. The anti social elements that make life in the cyber world miserable are the hackers.

 Beware! The hackers are playing around in the cyber space or internet. They may break into your e-mail account, facebook account, your blog, your online writing account and the like. It is just like a burglar breaking into your house when you are out, leaving your house locked. How can you prevent this? Only by protecting your passwords.
 

There was an attack on LinkedIn recently. The accounts of several users were hacked making them miserable. It might be an attempt to destabilize the web site. Many have lost confidence in the site due to this. Online dating site eHarmony also faced such a situation. It is believed that the hacking of passwords was due to lack of adequate protection.

 What can a user do to protect his or her password? One can keep changing passwords regularly. Keeping the password unchanged for a long period makes it easy for hackers to break it and play havoc with your account in a web site.
 

One may be having several web accounts with different sites. Some of us consider it convenient to have the same password for all such accounts. It is a very dangerous practice to keep the same password for two or more accounts. Each of them is likely to fell an easy prey to the hacker at the same time.
 

The password you select should be strong. It must have eight to ten characters or more. It should be alpha-numeric. That is, it should have numbers as well as letters in it. Characters like the hyphen, Dollar sign, question mark etc. can also be included for more safety. Letters in both upper case and lower case shall be included.

Complex passwords can be made from meaningful sentences. Then it will be easy to remember them. For example consider this sentence – My marriage was on 25-May-2001. A password can be made using the first letter of each word and the date in the sentence. Then it will be Mmwo25-M-2001 Strong passwords like this can be made in this manner. They can be easily remembered because they are based on some meaningful sentences.

Some sites have made it mandatory for every user to change his password periodically, say in every three months. One will be allowed to sign in only on changing his password like this. I think this is a good practice as people are reluctant to change passwords on their own.

Password managers like Keepas, Sxipper, and RoboForm can be used to organize passwords and secure the signing in process.

To know more about password security, visit the following web pages:
http://www.microsoft.com/security/online-privacy/passwords-create.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Password_strength