Keeping your password safe and strong

Your Passwords are so important to you!!! You never want anybody to find about them!!! Are they really strong once and protect.

Let’s find out. In this article we will see how to protect our passwords and how to make sure that they are strong enough to minimize the risks.

Choosing a strong password 

To make it harder for others to guess your passwords or compromise your passwords try to follow these advices.

When choosing a new password, please note that:

v It must not contain your username, or more than two consecutive characters from your full name.

v It must be a minimum of eight characters.

v It must contain characters from three of the following four categories or better all of them:

      Ø  At least one uppercase (A – Z)

      Ø  At least one lowercase (a – z)

      Ø  Numbers (0 – 9)

      Ø  Special characters (for example !, $, #, %)

v It must not be a password you have used before (previous passwords are remembered and compared to your new password).

v In addition, the strong password policy requires that you:

       Ø  Do not use personal information that someone else is likely to guess (for example family members' names, your phone number, basic words, etc…)

      Ø  Do not use passwords that are easy to identify when you type them in (such as sequences or repeated characters like 123456, 99999, abcd, azerty, qwerty, etc…)

Keeping your password safe

 

To protect your information’s from unauthorized access:

v Use different password for each account one or two passwords are easy to find out about and can make you lose everything at one time

v Do not write down your password and if you have too many passwords and you can’t remember them and you need to write them in a text file or notepad at least be sure to put that file under so many files that it’s impossible to find it or you can make it more secure and put a password on your file and to do that follow this tutorial.

v Do not share your username and password with anyone

v Do not let anyone see you type your password

v Remember to log off. Do not leave a PC without first logging off. Leaving your account logged in, especially if you are surrounded by people. Check that you're logged off before you leave your Laptop anywhere.

v Do not download programs from unknown sources on the internet some of the free software available on the internet may contain viruses, and some can actually allow unauthorized access to your account without your knowledge.

Software

Also you can use many programs or applications to store your passwords safely and access to them at any time and I will give you now my favorite once :

LastPass : The service works on Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer and Opera. LastPass generates usernames and passwords for you, and automatically fills them in when you visit a site where you've enabled the service.

Download

PasswordBox : PasswordBox gives free access to its mobile app. It allows you to store 25 passwords (either generated by the app or your own for free). 

Extensions

There is an extension that you can add to your browser that protect your chrome. As soon as you launch google chrome you will have to enter a password that you already defined to start using the navigator. If you wanna use this extension follow this link.

Online

You can also test how secure your password in this site.

And the most used passwords in 2015 are : 

1. 123456         
2. password
3. 12345
4. 1234
5. football
6. qwerty
7. 1234567890
8. 1234567
9. princess
10. solo 
11. login
12. welcome
13. loveme
14. hottie
15. abc123
16. 121212
17. 123456789
18. flower
19. passwOrd
20. dragon

I will keep this article updated for more solutions on how to be safe