In our previous blogs, we explored some other important online safety tips like, how Facebook quizzes could be using your information and how to stay safe when using Zoom and other online video conferencing apps.
In this short blog, we will look at keeping your account safe by having a secure password.
What makes a secure password?
When creating a password for a new account, or changing your password on an existing account it should be:
more than 12 characters in length
Include upper and lower case letters
include numbers
include symbols (!"£$%^*)
avoid common substitutions (like changing a letter to an obvious number for example - Pa55w0rd)
If you want to check how secure your password is, and how long it would take a computer to guess it, there are a few different tools you can find online to do this. Here are two of our favourites.
Tips to make a password easy to remember
When you make a new secure password, you might worry about forgetting it here are some tips on how to avoid that.
make it easy to remember but hard to guess
By this, we mean that you should pick something you like but not something other people would necessarily know about you. For example, your favourite film might be Star Wars, your password could be: Obi1JediNight33
use a password manager
A password manager is a program you can install that keeps track of all of your passwords, this means you can use super strong random passwords and you don't need to remember them in your head. Click here to search for password managers.
Additional Security Tips
Don't use the same password for all of your accounts
Never tell anyone your passwords
Never text or email anyone your password
Make sure you have an anti-virus program installed on your computer, and that it is up to date.
Use a random password generator to come up with a random, secure password.
Blog written by Robbie Stevenson, Development Officer. May 2020.
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