If you regularly post on social media or disseminate details like addresses and names online, a criminal might attempt to break past your security questions because they have enough information to guess the answers. So why not make them up? Come up with the false name of a childhood best friend, your first street, favorite […]

Some websites and applications allow or even require special characters – like < and ! – in passwords. If you have the option to include them, do so, since their presence makes the password more difficult to guess than if it only contained alphanumerics.

While it is totally possible to produce your own strong passwords – ones based on phrases for instance – it often may be more trouble than it’s worth. Many password managers, including ones built into OSes like Apple iOS, can take care of password generation, storage, organization and retrieval for you.

Studies have shown that overly complicated passwords — i.e., complex combinations of upper- and lower-case letters, numbers and special characters — are forgotten and require changing frequently. Instead, combine familiar words to create a longer password. Hacking software usually works by systematically figuring out each character of a password one-by-one, so the more characters you […]

Various services will permit you to keep the identical password for years. That may be unsafe, since data breaches might expose your credentials that you use across many sites. Try making strong passwords using a password generator, and change them periodically, every six months or so, to be sure you’re not using anything that’s already […]

Around are many established ways to make your passwords stronger, including the use of password managers to automatically create and store all your logins. As an alternative, you can try using your own terms by thinking of nonsensical phrases – e.g., “the Seahorse and the Plumber were preparing four pancakes!” and abbreviate it into a […]