How to avoid most common and dangerous passwords?

Is your Password secured? Do you think your Password is difficult enough for Hackers and Cyber Criminals to break. Read this article and make your online accounts secured.

According to a Survey, 79% of internet users use risky passwords, such as their personal information that is know to many people or common words. Here are some examples of most commonly used passwords.

123456

12345

password

prince

Country Name

City Name

abc123

qwerty

12345678

iloveyou

16% of the Users creates passwords using their first name

The Survey also says that majority of the passwords are upto 6-7 characters that is also a bad practice. Citing NASA Guidelines, it is recommended that all passwords should be at least eight characters, and contain a mix of four different types of characters i-e UPPER CASE LETTERS, lower case letters, 1234567890 (numerals) and *&^%$#@!~ (special characters).

Another good idea is that if you are using common words in password, try to replace '0' with '0' (Zero), 'E' with '3' and 'a' with '@' e-g instead of 'iloveyou', it can be '!l0v3y0u'.

Some other tricks for string passwords are here.

1) If possible, try to use atleast 14 characters.

2) The greater the variaty of characters in your password, the better.

3) Test your password with a password checker.

4) Take a sentence and turn it into password like "We have won the match" might become "W3hWONtm". Here we used 'W3' for 'We', 'h' for 'have', 'WON' for 'won' and 'tm' for 'the match'.

Cyber criminals use sophisticated tools that can rapidly figure out your password so try to avoid following types of password.

1) Usage of dictionary words in any language.

2) Words spelled backwards, abbreviations and common misspellings.

3) Personal Information like your name, birthday, driver's lisence, etc.