Despite being years that I always write the same thing in every article that talks about cyber security, still today most people underestimate the importance of having a secure password and continues to make the same mistake, that of using simple words as passwords and numbers that are easy to remember, always the same throughout
There are at least four important criticalities that must be kept in mind when creating the secure password of an account on the internet, be it Facebook, e-mail or even a forum where we talk about video games.
The first point is that from the Email or from the Facebook social profile or from a Google account it is really possible to trace a person's entire online life.
The second is that if you always use, more or less, the same easy password even for secondary service accounts, in case one of these services is hacked and the list of users is widespread, for every hacker in the world it could be a breeze to enter all our private online profiles, including email.
It should also be considered that using a proper name, the name of a city, the name of the son or grandson with the dates of birth as a password for a web account or for a program, they become easy to discover for anyone who knows us and wants to spy on us, who even out of boredom could try to access our Facebook or Gmail only knowing our main address and the name of our wife / children / granddaughter.
Finally, from the point of view of an average expert hacker, it is always easy to find out passwords that are made up of words from the Italian vocabulary or other languages.
Using a basic technique such as "bruteForce", using particular programs, a hacker can try all the vocabulary words in a few minutes to try to find out the password, without using particular combinations.
For these reasons, one of the basic IT security rules is to create secure passwords, which are different for all accounts .
In addition to being safe, however, these passwords must remain easy to remember, in order not to risk forgetting them and complicating life too much.
What makes a password safe "> passwords impossible to find out are, in summary:
- At least 8 characters.
- It must not contain easy-to-find information such as the date of birth, the telephone number, the name of the spouse, the name of the animal, the name of the child.
- It should not contain words found in the dictionary.
- Should contain special characters such as @ # $% ^ &, including numbers as well.
- Should use an alternation of upper and lower case letters.
How do we meet these features and create passwords that are easy to remember anyway?
The solution is to generate a do-it-yourself encryption key, that is, a method that we only know, to trace the right passwords with a quick and simple mental calculation.
There are many ways to adopt a password creation criterion and, as we see in these 5 simple and practical examples that everyone can use, it is not necessary to get to the encryption of the Enigma code, but just a little inventiveness and imagination.
1) The first trick to creating secure and easy to remember passwords is to think of a sentence and use the initials of this sentence.
For example, I could think "with Navigaweb the best site on the web", take the initials of each word and compose the password that becomes: cNismdw, impossible to guess, but easy to remember if we have the phrase in mind.
At this point we could decide that the Google password is cNismdw-G, the Facebook password cNismdw-F and so on.
With this sentence we also have a capital letter, so you just need to add a number to be just perfect and to be able to distinguish the sites that start with the same letter.
For example, therefore, in order not to use the same password for Amazon and Apple accounts, we can make the password cNismdw-A1 and ecNismdw-A2, putting the numbers 1 and 2 according to the second letter of the word, with the Amazon m that in the alphabet precedes the p of Apple.
This methodology does not even require you to write a sheet of notes to remember the criterion, although this would still be useful.
On the sheet we are not going to write the phrase that we use as a criterion, but only, for example, the numbers that correspond to the various accounts, in order to always have a way to recover them in case of slip or forgetfulness.
2) Use a book
The second trick is to use the word in a book as a password
Taking a book we have at home and paper (a famous book so that if it is lost it can be easily remedied), open it on a page, for example 101, find the first word of the third line (maybe a word that is more 5 characters long) and then use the word found plus the number 101 as the password.
On the book itself or on a sheet of notes, mark that page 101 is Google (whose password will be word101, and then go on like this for all the other accounts, word102, word103 etc.
To make the password a little more secure, make the first or last letter of the capital letter.
3) Remove the vowels from a sentence.
One way to create a strong password is to put 3 words together and remove all vowels.
For example, " beware of the dog " becomes ttntlcn .
Also here you can add the capital letter of the site to which the account refers and a number, possibly marking them on a note sheet.
4) Use certain keys on the PC keyboard.
An original way of creating a secure password is to choose three numbers and then write the letters below or according to a criterion that we only know.
For example, therefore, if the chosen number is 362, the password can become 3edc6yhn2wsx .
edc are the keys under the number 3 on the Qwerty keyboard, yhn are the keys under the 6 and wsx are the keys under the 2.
The password is impossible to guess and very easy to remember, even if there could be problems if you had to write it using a different keyboard like that of mobile phones.
5) The opposite of a word.
A fairly safe way of creating passwords is to reverse the word and write it backwards.
In this way we could also use commonly used words or names of people, such as Navigaweb which becomes bewagivan .
As usual it is important to add a number or symbol and use at least one capital letter.
Test password security
Passwords can be tested on the Howsecureismypassword website, which tells us how long it can be discovered by a computer, programmed by a hacker to search for every possible combination.
The site considers a password of at least 8 characters safe, but preferably 9 or better 10.
The Password Meter site can tell us if the passwords we are using meet all security requirements.
The alternative to these methods is to use a password management app, i.e. a program that randomly generates and keeps the passwords of each account, covering them behind a master password which becomes the only one that we must remember for all.
READ ALSO: How to create and manage passwords for web accounts
There are at least four important criticalities that must be kept in mind when creating the secure password of an account on the internet, be it Facebook, e-mail or even a forum where we talk about video games.
The first point is that from the Email or from the Facebook social profile or from a Google account it is really possible to trace a person's entire online life.
The second is that if you always use, more or less, the same easy password even for secondary service accounts, in case one of these services is hacked and the list of users is widespread, for every hacker in the world it could be a breeze to enter all our private online profiles, including email.
It should also be considered that using a proper name, the name of a city, the name of the son or grandson with the dates of birth as a password for a web account or for a program, they become easy to discover for anyone who knows us and wants to spy on us, who even out of boredom could try to access our Facebook or Gmail only knowing our main address and the name of our wife / children / granddaughter.
Finally, from the point of view of an average expert hacker, it is always easy to find out passwords that are made up of words from the Italian vocabulary or other languages.
Using a basic technique such as "bruteForce", using particular programs, a hacker can try all the vocabulary words in a few minutes to try to find out the password, without using particular combinations.
For these reasons, one of the basic IT security rules is to create secure passwords, which are different for all accounts .
In addition to being safe, however, these passwords must remain easy to remember, in order not to risk forgetting them and complicating life too much.
What makes a password safe "> passwords impossible to find out are, in summary:
- At least 8 characters.
- It must not contain easy-to-find information such as the date of birth, the telephone number, the name of the spouse, the name of the animal, the name of the child.
- It should not contain words found in the dictionary.
- Should contain special characters such as @ # $% ^ &, including numbers as well.
- Should use an alternation of upper and lower case letters.
How do we meet these features and create passwords that are easy to remember anyway?
The solution is to generate a do-it-yourself encryption key, that is, a method that we only know, to trace the right passwords with a quick and simple mental calculation.
There are many ways to adopt a password creation criterion and, as we see in these 5 simple and practical examples that everyone can use, it is not necessary to get to the encryption of the Enigma code, but just a little inventiveness and imagination.
1) The first trick to creating secure and easy to remember passwords is to think of a sentence and use the initials of this sentence.
For example, I could think "with Navigaweb the best site on the web", take the initials of each word and compose the password that becomes: cNismdw, impossible to guess, but easy to remember if we have the phrase in mind.
At this point we could decide that the Google password is cNismdw-G, the Facebook password cNismdw-F and so on.
With this sentence we also have a capital letter, so you just need to add a number to be just perfect and to be able to distinguish the sites that start with the same letter.
For example, therefore, in order not to use the same password for Amazon and Apple accounts, we can make the password cNismdw-A1 and ecNismdw-A2, putting the numbers 1 and 2 according to the second letter of the word, with the Amazon m that in the alphabet precedes the p of Apple.
This methodology does not even require you to write a sheet of notes to remember the criterion, although this would still be useful.
On the sheet we are not going to write the phrase that we use as a criterion, but only, for example, the numbers that correspond to the various accounts, in order to always have a way to recover them in case of slip or forgetfulness.
2) Use a book
The second trick is to use the word in a book as a password
Taking a book we have at home and paper (a famous book so that if it is lost it can be easily remedied), open it on a page, for example 101, find the first word of the third line (maybe a word that is more 5 characters long) and then use the word found plus the number 101 as the password.
On the book itself or on a sheet of notes, mark that page 101 is Google (whose password will be word101, and then go on like this for all the other accounts, word102, word103 etc.
To make the password a little more secure, make the first or last letter of the capital letter.
3) Remove the vowels from a sentence.
One way to create a strong password is to put 3 words together and remove all vowels.
For example, " beware of the dog " becomes ttntlcn .
Also here you can add the capital letter of the site to which the account refers and a number, possibly marking them on a note sheet.
4) Use certain keys on the PC keyboard.
An original way of creating a secure password is to choose three numbers and then write the letters below or according to a criterion that we only know.
For example, therefore, if the chosen number is 362, the password can become 3edc6yhn2wsx .
edc are the keys under the number 3 on the Qwerty keyboard, yhn are the keys under the 6 and wsx are the keys under the 2.
The password is impossible to guess and very easy to remember, even if there could be problems if you had to write it using a different keyboard like that of mobile phones.
5) The opposite of a word.
A fairly safe way of creating passwords is to reverse the word and write it backwards.
In this way we could also use commonly used words or names of people, such as Navigaweb which becomes bewagivan .
As usual it is important to add a number or symbol and use at least one capital letter.
Test password security
Passwords can be tested on the Howsecureismypassword website, which tells us how long it can be discovered by a computer, programmed by a hacker to search for every possible combination.
The site considers a password of at least 8 characters safe, but preferably 9 or better 10.
The Password Meter site can tell us if the passwords we are using meet all security requirements.
The alternative to these methods is to use a password management app, i.e. a program that randomly generates and keeps the passwords of each account, covering them behind a master password which becomes the only one that we must remember for all.
READ ALSO: How to create and manage passwords for web accounts
