Check how Safe and Hackable your Passwords are

It is very important for us to create and keep simple, easy to remember yet stronger passwords that can keep all the hackers and other attackers away. Today we have lots and lots of online accounts like those from bank accounts, social accounts to our personal and work emails. Every account needs a password and I can imagine how difficult it is to keep passwords strong enough every now and then and still abide their password policies.

Well you can make use of Passwords Manager too in this case but if you don’t feel like then here are some tips that will definitely make you aware on “How you should create your passwords and how to take then from hackable to uncrackable”.

Tips to Create Passwords

Before we go deep in this topic, it would be better to know how much safe is your current password. Did you know, even a complex password like “XF1&tmb” would take 6 minutes to hack, according to Intel whereas a password like “The-shining-sea” can make the hacker busy for around 48 years?

Well do visit the Intel’s “How strong is your password page” and you can check for yourself, how much strong your passwords are and how much time it would take for a hacker to crack it. In my test on one of my passwords, I was surprised to see that it could be cracked in around 39 seconds. Gosh! Similarly, passwords like “12345” or “abcde” would take around 0 seconds to get cracked.

So if you now think it is time to change a password, then the following tips shall help you a lot:

• First of all, do not keep the same password for all your accounts. If you feel it is difficult to do that, then at least keep different passwords for bank accounts, email accounts, and social accounts. This way, even if your email password gets hacked, your bank accounts will be safe.

• Create password mix of Upper Case, Lower Case, Numbers, Punctuation marks and Spaces (some websites now allow space as password, if they do, use them else use dashes in place of them). As per Intel, even the simple sounding password “My 1st Password!” will take months to crack.

• Use prefixes or suffixes to distinguish the passwords for different websites example, “My 1st Password!: Twtr” for Twitter and “My 1st Password!: Fb” for Facebook.

Now since you have become a Password Master, go ahead and change your passwords to make them safe and unhackable. [via]