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Friday, October 17, 2008

Tips in securing your passwords or PIN

Nowadays, its quite common to have so many passwords to keep as every time you register to have a new email account perhaps would require you to register and have a unique password for that particular email account. What if you have 5 or 15 accounts for your email, blogger accounts to gaming site accounts, most probably you would be using a pattern in order to remember all these passwords. Aaaahhhh PASSWORD, the most vital info in todays computer age. From using our ATM card PINs to logging to your favorite friendster account, passwords keep your personal information from people who are privy to steal your personal information. Yet the vast majority of people who accesses the internet uses the same passwords for different sites that they have registered.



Here's some suggestion that you may apply to secure your password or PIN use.
a. Give careful thought when creating your password whether it is for online gaming site or your email account. Passwords keep your data private.

b. Never choose anything obvious information such as your name, address or date of birth, spouse name or your child's name.

c. Never use the same password for multiple web sites or accounts

d. Passwords that include the combination of letters and numbers such as 'rx8c64m39' are more secure. Having an alpha-numeric passwords ensures that no one could easily guess your password and hackers will likely move on to try to find other less secure accounts, but again, avoid those easily-guessed alpha-numeric passwords such as '5678lisa'.

e. If you write your password on a piece of paper, ensure that you keep this piece of info in a safe place. Your best bet is to have a password management software that will help you secure ALL your passwords from. Password management softwares operates on a simple concept, all your passwords are contained within it, protected by a master password. Most of these password management programs utilizes 128-bit encryption to keep data secure. Now you only have to memorize ONE complex master password.

f. Do not let other people know of your password or PIN. Not even to your boyfriend or girlriend, if he or she does not have business in accessing accounts, its safer to keep your password to yourself.

g. Change your passwords once in a while.


In summary, make your passwords unique and as complex as you can manage to remember. The better they are, the less you will have to worry about the security of your private personal data - the perfect password is only good as long as just YOU know what it is.

Photo credit : John Shakespeare / www.theage.com.au

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

nice tips!!!

the last one is kinda hard for me though

i hate memorizing numbers hehe

Dan said...

Thanks Alex,

Well if you hate numbers, just try to get password management software and all you need is memorize the MASTER password. You could get these utility from the internet. Some are freeware which are quite good. I'm using Password Agent.

Cheers !!!

Anonymous said...

thanks for all these tips. i better start to be careful with my passwords.
have a great day.

Anonymous said...

thanks for all these tips. i better start to be careful with my passwords.
have a great day.

Anonymous said...

I uniquely combined my password and number in a variety of ways, but not too confusing as in, for example: 1two3four, then: one2three4. But years have passed and the variety rarely changed, BUT MY NAME DID. Ooops. Combination trouble as I rarely signed my old name the same way, using first and last, or first and middle. Arrghhh

Dan said...

Hi Out Of the Blue,
yes its never too late to apply precautionary measures in securing your PINs or passwords.

Hi Dana,
Good points but as you have said, its getting more complicated as we have more passwords or PINs to manage so sometimes good password management program is quite handy.

Cheers !!!

Anonymous said...

thsx for your tips, friends.

Dan said...

You're welcome W&F !!!