Password Protection

How many passwords do you have, at your work, at home, from your locker, bank accounts, etc? It is very possibly that we are talking about double digit number of password for the average person. These passwords are very important to you since they protect your data, personal details, your money and your personal integrity. But if you loose some of your passwords you are in problem, since you cannot operate with some of your own resources. Even worse happen if somebody steals your password.

When you creating your password do not try to choose to obvious password like your name or name of your spouse. Also, do not take the password after your football club, hobby, birthday number or anything else that people around you knows about you.

What should you do to make your password safe? Try to use more than 6 letters. Use combination of letters and numbers. Use capital letters. Change your passwords periodically. When you registering for an email account, you can use two methods for help in case that you loose your password. One method is the "secret question-answer", where you set the question that you will be asked if you loose your password. If you answer correctly, you will be able to create a new password. Another method is the use of secondary e-mail address, where your password will be sent, if you request it. Simply, you can register on two accounts and cross-connect these two accounts as a secondary account.

Now, since you have a good password, the logical question is how to store the password. This is always an difficult issue. The most "secure" way of storing your password is memorizing. But this method is not the most reliable since you can forget your password, especially if you juggling many passwords. If you have many passwords, try to use some software password database software. The simplest way of password storage is using password protected excel sheet.

At least try to avoid the worst method, which is writing the password on your desk, in your note book, etc.

There is always a certain possibility for your password to be stolen, no matter how unimportant your password is. Even a secondary email account can be the target of hackers. One of the most frequent ways of password hijacking is using of false membership offer. This offer usually arrives as a spam mail that offers you to register to same service, like dating service, "check who blocked you on MSN", etc. These "services" are offering you a membership form where they, among other fields, ask you for your mail account and the password. Why would they ask you your password? For simple reason – to hijack your account and use it for spamming, or at least collecting your contacts for their mail databases, that can be sold on market.

Social hacking is another method of hacking of your password. Simply, hacker is contacting you as a "system administrator" or similar support service and asks you your personal data, including your password. This is not technical hacking, but simply social hacking, where the hacker is using security unawareness of some people.

Even if you give your password to somebody you really know well, like your friend or system administrator that you know very well, change your password after you have no more need to share the password. Even that the person that was given password is reliable, maybe the method of their system of password management is not reliable.

As a conclusion, keep security and reliability as main principles of safe password storage.