I am currently studying to take a computer certification that is geared for security. With all the internet based accounts we have, we often feel that we should use something that we can remember. Nothing wrong with that.

However, May I suggest that you use different characters to make it harder to crack. For example lets say that you want to use your pats name: dog

Well for starters, it's a little too short.

Common rule 1: The password must be at least 8 characters long

We need to come up with 5 extra characters. we decide to modify it to: myolddog = 8 characters long

Common rule 2: use some upper case characters

We need to use capital letters for some of our letters. believe it or not the comuter has different value (ok we will use number values) the letter "a" is represented with a numerical value that is different than the letter "A"

or  "a" does not equal "A"

Our Next modification results in: MyOldDog

Common rule 3: Use numbers.

This one is simple enough to follow. Our password is now modified to look like: My01dD0g

As you can tell we subsitiuted the number 0 for the letter o and the number 1 for the letter l

So far we have made our password much harder to crack we have met all of the rules above.

Common Rule 4: Use special characters

What are special characters? the following are examples of special characters: !@#$%^&*()

Well I really like our password so far, I think I will just include a special character to it.

Final version: My0ldD0g!

As you can see, the password is still relatively simple to remember. but what you just did is make your password almost impossible to crack.

Common rule 5: Change your password frequently

Programs out there exists which can automatically generate random characters to crack your password (called brute force attack) by changing your password from time to time, you are ensuring that your passwords are safe (for now).

With identity theft rising, it helps to take these standard practice to heart.

Thanks for Reading this post :)

Rich T.