Is your password one of the 10 most common?

Are your passwords hard to guess? Are you using a different password for every important online account? It’s very important that you don’t use the same password for multiple accounts, because if one password gets compromised, then you grant access to all your accounts that have the same password.

But did you know that even if you use a different password for all your accounts, you can still compromise many of them just through a single email account?

For example, say a bad guy finds out what your email password is. Then they find out where you bank at. Then they could use the password reset feature available on the bank website to get a new password using your email address. Bingo – they’re now have access to your funds!

According to multiple recent studies the 10 most common passwords are:

1. 123456

2. password

3. 12345678

4. qwerty

5. abc123

6. 123456789

7. 111111

8. 1234567

9. iloveyou

10. adobe123

Is yours one of these?

Here are a few tips on how to create good passwords:

– Use a different password for every important online account
– Never use common names or words that can be found in a dictionary
– Use a mix of numbers, letters, and symbols
– Create random, meaningless patterns that are easy to remember (like the first letter of each word in a favorite song or poem)
– Use a random password generator such as http://strongpasswordgenerator.com/

My favorite tip for strong but memorable passwords is to make a sentence and use the first letter from each word. For example:

My four kids drive me crazy! = m4kdmc!
I will win 10 millon dollars = iww10m$
Broken computer? Call Teknyka to fix it = bc?cTtfi
Think you have a strong password? Test it by going to http://howsecureismypassword.net/. This site determines how long it would take a regular desktop PC to crack your password. Don’t worry, this test is secure (although it would be a clever password gathering tool!). It’s a simple Java Script that runs on your computer – not theirs. No data ever travels from your computer to the website. You can check this by loading up the webpage and then turning off your internet connection. You’ll still be able to use the website to check your password.

By the way, don’t share your password with your technician unless absolutely necessary. After the service is done, change your password to something different.