Today is exactly what it says on the tin. It’s time to change up some of your passwords so that they’re more secure. That’s no easy feat since we’ve got passwords to things we’ve forgotten we’ve made in the first place. Sure, you may think you’ve found just the right number to letter ratio, but we’re obliged to let you in on some bad news: Your password might still be terrible. As clever as we think our passwords are, someone with a working knowledge of how people think when making a password can crack it far more easily than anyone could guess. That’s if someone is trying a brute force attack.

 

You’re up, however, against computers. Encrypted passwords can be cross-checked with dictionaries in every language and more. It really doesn’t take long to crack a short password and most of us keep outs between 6 to 8 letters. Some use only 4. The key to having a secure password is length. Longer passwords are far harder to crack than anything that seems clever and concise. That sounds inconvenient since everyone wants a quick log-in for their accounts, but it’s the truth. Variety is also helpful. Many sites allow users to create passwords with characters we don’t usually use. Browse your keyboard. Sometimes passwords can be full sentences with complete punctuation. That makes things easy to remember and hard to crack.

 

Letting a website remember your password for you also increases the risk of your password being found out. As convenient and quick as it is to let a site or your browser insert your password for you, it’s a legitimate danger that ruins all the work you’ve put into creating the password in the first place. For quick and easy password insertion, it’s best to go with a Password Manager. This tracks your passwords and can only be access by a master password. This makes things fast, organized, and secure. For those with Firefox, there is even a master password option for users to manage anything they’ve had their browser remember.

To see some of the best methods of security, check out Gizmodo’s take on password protection!