Think twice when you set-up your password, and always adhere to the best password's practices

There is surprising how many people are using weak passwords for protecting their accounts, or they are tricked to give their password when a malicious person says "the right words". And I also think no matter how many articles are written on this subject there will be always someone's account which will be scammed because of a weak password.

My points with this article are:

Use strong passwords to protect you accounts, and NEVER, EVER give you passwords to another person!

Weak passwords

But the first step in creating a strong password is to understand what weak passwords are. Some of the most common weak passwords are :

• any dictionary words, or words variations (The most common variations are using number 3 instead of the letter e, exclamation mark instead of the letter i or number zero instead of the letter o. For example, using s0cc3r instead of soccer);
• names or places (your name, your kid name, your pet name, your birth place or your living town);
• dates, like your birthday, your anniversary, your kids birthday, a date of an important event in your life;
• anything that is easy to type.

The above are practices that everyone should avoid when creates passwords for their online accounts.

Strong passwords

Instead you should create strong passwords for every account you hold. The key elements which make a strong password are:

• use random letters, numbers and symbols;
• use long and unique phrases that makes sense only for you (this helps remembering the password);
• do not create passwords which are less than 12 characters (although 8 characters are good enough).

Among the best practice to handle your accounts passwords are:

• do not use dictionary plain words or variations;
• do not write down you passwords;
• do not share your passwords with anyone;
• do not reuse the same password across multiple websites.

How do I deal with the passwords?

On a personal note, I want to share with you how I deal with passwords. Because I enforce myself a rule to not use the same password for more than one account, every time I have to create an account on a new system is always a challenge for me. Often I forget my passwords, and I prefer to use the recovery functionality to recover my access to the account (this way I address another good security practice: change your account password periodically).

I enforce myself strong password policy which I take into consideration when I create a password:

• I always create passwords with are at least 12 characters long;
• I use a combination of at least one number, a special character and a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters;
• I do not reuse passwords across multiple sites, and certainly I do not share my password with anyone.

Other practices to follow for securing your accounts

Another good practice to secure your accounts is to enable multi-factor authentication, where possible.

If you are asking to set-up security questions to recover the account access in case you lost your password, take into consideration to not use real answers for this questions.