October is Cyber Security Awareness Month, so we figured that now’s a good a time as any to discuss “password protocol”.
If you’ve been using the same password for everything since you got that shiny AOL disc in the mail so very long ago, it’s probably time to change those passwords.
You’ll want your new passwords to be strong, but not something that you’ll easily forget.
A “strong” password is generally six or more characters, a combination of letters (both upper and lower case), numbers, and symbols.
For example, I like tacos (who doesn’t?), so I want tacos to be my password. It isn’t enough to just set my passwords to “tacos”, that would be “weak”. Let’s strengthen this password by using upper and lower case characters, numbers , and symbols.
How about “T@co5”? That’s pretty good but not quite enough characters, besides, I really like tacos, so let’s make it “!T@co5!”
Now we have a nice and strong password: !T@co5!
But changing all of my accounts to my awesome (and tasty) new password would just be silly. What if someone managed to hack just one of my accounts, then they’d know my password to EVERYTHING! Not cool!
What if I were to create my own system of using my new password? A “protocol” if you will.
Maybe I could add some flavor to my Facebook account by changing the password to “!T@co5!book”. I could make my gmail password a bit more spicy by changing it to “G!T@co5!”. Oh! My bank account password can be “!T@co5!bank”. Get the picture?
Now I have a strong new password for all of my important accounts that I’m guaranteed to never forget.
Easy as pie… Taco pie.
If you have any questions about password protocols, or just want to bring us some tacos, feel free to catch us here at No Ware Computer Repair.
Great, now I’m getting hungry…