What Are Good And Bad Passward

In this lesson, you'll learn the characteristics of good and bad passwords and how to create secure ones. 

If you are an average PC user, you probably have more than 14 different passwords to remember and that you use on a regular basis. You will have a password to access your PC, a password for your favorite shopping Web sites, passwords for your email accounts, and another dozen or so for a variety of Web sites and applications. 
We live in a world where you need to create new passwords regularly. Some of them are for unimportant things (where your money or identity isn't at risk), and for those, you are free to use a weaker password because it will be a lot less hassle. However, there are times when you need to create a really strong password to protect your important information. 

Here are three simple steps to creating a strong password. 

• Passwords must be eight characters or longer. No excuses.
• Combine letters, numbers, and other keyboard symbols but stay away from sequences (such as 12345678 or abcdefgh or qwertyui). If there's a pattern involved, then there's also a weakness! Also steer clear of passwords where you substitute similar-looking symbols for characters (such as p@55w0rd; hackers know all these tricks). The more random a password, the better.
• Don't use your name, birthday, anniversary, or any words from the dictionary. You're wasting your time even putting these passwords in place. They make it way too easy for the bad guys to get at your stuff.
• Remember, a weak password is effective only against an honest person.
• Final tip: Store your passwords safely. An open source software product called PasswordSafe, is a good example of a small, secure application for storing your passwords in. All your passwords are safely and securely encrypted in a file so that you need to remember only one password.

 
Using PasswordSafe to generate a random password.

If you keep all your passwords in an application such as PasswordSafe, make sure that you keep a backup of the password storage file in a safe place and update it regularly in case you suffer a PC crash and lose your data. Another advantage of using an application such as PasswordSafe is that you can use it to generate secure passwords automatically.