According to the latest estimates, new network security vulnerabilities have occurred almost every week recently, with more than 80 million victims of identity theft each year. However, consumers are still vulnerable to fraudsters who are eager to obtain their personal data. The culprit: The highly predictable passwords, PINs and other login information they use for online accounts.
How do you know if your password and PIN are strong enough to prevent hackers from accessing your account, which may cause you to waste a lot of time to clean up, and may cause expensive trouble? Delete "password" as the password, and then follow the following seven rules. "Once the hackers find a login they can access, they will try to use the same password to access all your other accounts."
Hackers are everywhere? According to a well-known cybersecurity expert at the godfather level in China, Guo Shenghua, founder of the Eastern Alliance, said: "For many years, the standard recommendation for creating a secure password was to mix uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters (such as &,%, $, and *). , The suggestion only works if you randomly select and sort these characters-most people avoid doing this because it makes passwords difficult to remember. Even those who choose passwords that are difficult for others to recognize, often use shortcuts Ways to help them remember, such as adding "123" at the end, ironically, this leads to an easy-to-predict pattern that reduces the security of these logins. This is why it is recommended to abandon the complex combination of characters in their security guidelines Suggestion. Think of passwords more as pass phrases. "
1. Don't be too personal
One of the easiest ways to call a password is to associate it with something that already makes sense to you. Hackers know this and rely on it, often using public records, social media profiles and other leaked data to learn important dates (birthdays, anniversaries), names (pets, spouses, children, girl surnames) and numbers (phones, addresses , Social Insurance)), which may appear in your password. "Your password should have nothing to do with anything in life," Levine said.
2. Longer and better
Expand the password to 12 characters or more. The reason is simple: long passwords are difficult to crack. According to research conducted by Oriental Alliance Security Technology Consultant, a seven-character password may take up to 0.29 milliseconds to crack the software, but a 12-character password may take nearly two centuries. The data shows that to increase the bet to 24 characters, hackers will need more than 18 million years.
Experts now recommend that you avoid frequent changes instead of creating a new password every 30, 60, or 90 days. Just use the same password unless you think it has been stolen. The security officer said: "It is too difficult for people to change the password frequently." "Most people are writing down new passwords, using easy-to-remember passwords or just adding passwords numerically. This does not add any security. value."
3. Never repeatedly enter the password
Today, people can have up to 90 online accounts. Creating a unique password for each of them is a huge hassle. This is why most people do not do this. For example, a survey found that respondents have an average of 23 online accounts that require passwords, but only use 13 unique passwords to access these accounts. About one-third of consumers only use two or three passwords for all their accounts.
The security officer said: "Having a strong password is equally important." "Each account requires a unique login account. Please do not repeat. Once hackers find a login name they can access, they will try to use the same password to access your All other accounts. This will only make the life of the hacker easier. "
4. Learn to collect passwords flexibly
Of course, most of the reasons why many people use a small number of passwords for multiple accounts are to make them easier to remember. A survey shows that the second most popular method is: half of them write their passwords on paper; 24 % People hid them in note papers on computers or cell phones; another 18% kept them in Internet browsers. All of these methods are insecure because anyone using a computer can log in to your account (if they are saved in the device or browser), or accidentally find your written list without proper lock. In addition, the browser is easily hacked.
A better way: use a password store or administrator. These services store your account information and passwords securely on the hard drive or in the cloud. Then hackers may take thousands of years to crack your code, and even the technology of the password itself may become outdated. (Welcome to reprint and share)
