Internet Passwords - Your password to internet security

Managing an arsenal of passwords is an indispensable part of the internet culture.The use of password is your first line of security defence, without which keeping data safe will be an insurmountable challenge. With the need for numerous login accounts, using the same password for each login is tempting, BUT it might not be the most sensible decision around as some websites do not have strong security. Illegal access to password information from seemingly innocent-looking websites like ecards site may lead to the same information being used to hack into payment sites like paypal. The loss of personal financial data could result in grave consequences that one would do better without. To demonstrate how easy it is to hack a Facebook account, let's take a look at the following video (i bet you'll probably starting hacking around after viewing it!)

I'm sure all of you have hear of the saying that goes "to err is human", perhaps they should complete it by adding "to slack is normal". We all have the tendency to get lazy and complacent, that is only human nature. How many times have we heard of passwords being set as "password" and other outrageously simple and easy-to-guess security codes. There's a chinese saying that goes, the more dangerous the place is, the safer you are. So it seems like people have been putting that into practice. But they're WRONG! Numerous ingenious programs have been written to crack passwords at high volume, some by hackers while others are created by legitimate security testing tools. Most of these programs use a variety of dictionary based attacks to combine common words and word variations to try thousands of passwords as fast as the targeted system will permit. Some begin by guessing a whole bunch of common passwords. Outsmarting these intelligent attacks is not as easy as we think.

Strong passwords are essential in providing important protections to your online transactions. A password should be sufficiently long and complicated to make it difficult to guess. One trick is to use mneumonics. Instead of using a common word, the first letters of each word of a phrase is used to make the password. Adding numerals or symbols to a password makes it harder to crack. A password cracker has to guess the correct string and may try to use all possible combinations. By using numerals or symbols, this will increase the number of possibilities and cause the process to take longer.

In addition, short passwords should be avoided as they can be guessed in an reasonable amount of time by a motivated individual and offers little resistance against software hackers. In Roger A Grimes' 2006 article, Password Size Does Matter, he recommended using a password of at least 15 characters to keep it from being cracked. Other common password pitfalls include creating passwords using dictionary words in any language, words spelled backwards, sequences or repeated characters as well as personal information (birthday, passport number etc).

Passwords should be known only by the computer user and the applicable service provider. They should not be written down since they may be viewed by someone else. Writing down a password makes it simple for another person to pretend to be another user. If, say, login information is written on a Post-it stuck underneath a keyboard, another employee can use that to gain unauthorized access to files.

Since there are so many computers attached to the Internet, performing online transactions carries the risk of being seen by another person. To minimize this risk, when making an online purchase, a secure site should be used. The beginning of the website address may read “https:” which Eric Lawrence explains in his 2006 article HTTPS Security Improvements in Internet Explorer 7, this indicates a site that will use encryption to hide information being sent over the Internet so that no one can read it along the way.

It is important to use unique passwords for services that store personal financial data such as banking and payment sites. This reduces the risk that a password stolen from another site list could be used to access the confidential data. Shopping and travel sites may keep credit card information so those should be unique as well.