As I wrote last week, Russian hackers may have stolen billions of passwords and I am pretty sure your’s and mine are included in the bunch. So I advised all of my readers to change their passwords immediately. I certainly hope you have. Right now, and I’m pretty sure of this, those hackers are disposing of the evidence of their crime. But I am equally sure that they are selling those passwords on the black market as we speak. I just hope that you followed my advice and changed yours making the old password useless. If you haven’t then you were warned.
One of the things I constantly preach is the use of pass phrases rather than passwords. That means long passwords that are jumbled with numbers and characters to make it difficult to guess or break. Here is one of my old passwords that I no longer use; Too2@Ix35!&sFGG. Now you may not see the pattern I used but I gaurantee that I could easily remember that password because it has meaning to me. And that is way your passwords should look.
Like most people, black people make the same common password mistakes and the result is that someone who is watching you may decide to break your password. It’s pretty if you put your mind to it. Many people use their initials, child’s or pet’s name and easy to guess numbers like an address or zip code. Hackers depend on people using short easy to guess passwords to get into your accounts and rob you. So you need to learn to construct a solid pass phrase.
For more on the common mistakes people make when constructing passwords please visit WeLiveSecurity.com for their short video. It could save you some headaches down the road.