A secure password is important as it prevents criminals from guessing it, and hacking your digital accounts.
Accessing your accounts could let someone spend your money, say with Paypal or impersonate you to hack into more accounts.
If you’ve ever forgotten a password you will have found that often you get a link sent to your email address to let you change it. As such making sure your email is secure is doubly important as can let someone access any of the accounts that use it.
What your password should NOT be:
Some of the most common passwords are ‘password’, ‘p@assw0rd’, explicit or abusive terms, single words like ‘spitfire’, ‘grass’, ‘laptop’, or a persons name maybe followe by a number.
The company which has your account may be hacked at some point, and the password you used will be at risk of discovery. To make sure that as few accounts get hacked as possible, use a different password for every account.
What your password should be:
- At least 8 characters long, preferably at least 10
- A combination of letters (upper and lower case), numbers and symbols like (‘{£*”.>?).
- Possibly contain an obscure or personal combination of words to make it easier to remember
- The most secure password would be a truly random combinations of characters, but that can be hard to remember.
Following the above
Sometimes it can be hard to motivate yourself to follow the above when you have a lot of accounts or you are required to change your password every 3 months or so. It is worth it to protect yourself from being hacked though.