Surprisingly many people do not pay much attention when setting passwords. When opening a new account, the passwords are often taken for granted and re-used for every account. When you opened a VodaHost web hosting account, did you really think about the password you entered? What people do not realize is that this puts your accounts at risk.More than half of all internet users have admitted to having a set password for all their accounts. Here are some more statistics based on major password breaches over the past 20 years:
- Passwords are usually names, slang, often trivial words that are found in the dictionary. That is nearly 50 percent of users.
- 30 percent of users set passwords that are six characters or less.
- 60 percent choose passwords that are from a limited group of alpha-numeric characters.
- Less than 4 percent of users use symbols within their passwords.
Hackers know all the password patterns in the book and it takes them 5 seconds to try 171,476 words from the Oxford Dictionary with password-cracking software.
An ideal password is definitely not a word. A great password would be to just lay your whole hand down on the keyboard and see what you produce. You would need to do that with every password for every account you have! That is not very realistic however, since we do have to remember the damn things. Marion Merritt from Norton Security has given ‘regular people’ a few tips on how we can create a solid password.
Basic secrets to a good password
Firstly, you should not be using dictionary words. Combinations of characters (letters and numbers) should not be used either. For example some people may find making a certain pattern on their keyboard easy to remember. The word “WERTY” for example which is going from left to right on your keyboard or “PLMOKN” which is going down. It may seem like a good idea but guess what, it is way too easy to crack. The keyboard patterns have become very popular. The reason this has become a problem is because hackers can launch hacks by using the data from data breaches as a dictionary. Sometimes, even if your password is not even a word it can be traceable if it is used by many. Any pattern which is known and used by many people must be avoided. If you are using a pattern for your web hosting account, go ahead and change it now, you do not want people having access to all your files!
Protecting one account more than another
You may have many different accounts and wonder whether some of them should be 
protected more than others. Well, the most important account of all is that of your email. The reason you must protect your email password most of all is because every account that you have has a ‘forgot your password’ option. Since we are always being told to create crazy, unique passwords, we simply cannot live without this feature. Well, a hacker easily has control over your email account, and if he does, he can change everything. So, you are being told once again – to create a complex and seriously unique password to protect your email account. Keep in mind that once you have found that brilliant password, DO NOT use it anywhere else. If you do and something goes wrong or it is hacked, you will have given away all the information to all your accounts – smooth sailing for any hacker out there.
Using password manager software
An advantage of using a password manager is that it makes the generation of unique and complex passwords easy. Marion Merritt does recommend using such software. She also mentions the Norton Password Manager that encrypts all the information, creating a ‘cloud’ as they call it. You save everything within this ‘cloud’ (of encryption if you will) and you can log in on any computer and retrieve your passwords. Norton Security provides this service but there are other as well.
Password management has gotten a whole lot worse. Simply because you are required to have a password for everything, people are exhausted and suffer from password fatigue. Hence people usually have two or three good passwords for their ‘serious’ accounts and then have one for everything else. As long as the generic password does not include sites that you can lose money from. If it has nothing to do with credit cards, online shopping or your bank there is not much concern. There is however the possibility that you find out there has been a data breach within a program that you use. You have to remember where else you used that password. Will you be able to do that? That is another major advantage of a password manager; it will tell you exactly where you have been using different passwords.
What are hackers capable of?
The most common way websites work is that a user can enter the wrong password in three times. After that third time, they are locked out. It is not only based on the number of times however, but on the time lapse between the requests. A normal user will take some time to re-enter the password and try again. A hacker on the other hand can go through a whole database of tries within a few seconds.
Therefore there is no point in thinking that it is impossible for them to come across a word that matches your password within 5 tries. Their tries are unlimited. They are equipped with previously used passwords and of course any information now available to the world through social networks.
How to create a strong password
A great way to come up with a unique, strong password is to first come up with a phrase you can memorize. You then take the first letter of each word within the phrase. For example, “June is the best month to travel to Greece”. In this case y our password is as follows: JitbmtttG . What you have done here is, you have chosen a phrase which is unique and will not come up in a dictionary or in any hacker’s database. The only bad aspect about this password is that if it does get hacked and you have used it everywhere, it is as good as nothing! Customize the phrase for every account you use.
So you have got your brilliant password – JitbmtttG, and now you want to customize it. Say you are on VodaHost.com for example, you could take the first an last letters of the website you are on to customize your password for that specific account. In this case you will take the ‘v’ and the ‘t’, making your password: vJitbmtttGt . It may seem complicated but you are creating a method you can remember and reproduce.
Good Luck!
Suggested reading: “The Secrets to Promoting Your Website Online” by VodaHost web hosting 
