Invisibility cloaks? The ability to reach lightning speed and take a quick tour around the world during your lunch break? How about the power to walk through walls? Until humanity finds a way to make these dreams come true, why don’t we focus on an underrated superpower: strong password creation.
Quick question: do you believe your passwords are invincible? Whatever your answer, your work’s still not done in this area of your e-life. If the answer’s yes, don’t forget you need to change them often. As no password is uncrackable, that’s the closest to a golden rule that we’ve got on these shaky grounds. If you’re more of a skeptic, or if your answer is a loud and clear “no”Â, change is the word for you as well! You’re just a step away from account hijacking, so: beware!
When you enter your password-changing state of mind, make sure you slip in numbers and letters (both upper and lower case) and a customized assortment of special characters. Before you start rolling your eyes in despair, let me present you the exhibit of the day:
Looks like some admins don’t know their ABCs, but seem to be experts in their 123s. A hacker recently succeeded in breaking into a site and … surprise, surprise! All the passwords, including the admin’s one, were 123456!
“Aren’t these passwords hilarious?” commented the witty hacker, probably astonished by the findings.
If this doesn’t make you want to change your 1234 password right away, I don’t know what will! Ah, do make sure you have a different password for each online account. Ready, steady, go! Be creative!
P.S. Try swordfish 1234567! It’ll work. Marx brothers’ honor! 😉
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Sabina Datcu, PhD has background training in Applied Informatics and Statistics, Biology and Foreign Languages and Literatures.
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