On a regular basis, I get calls from customers who’ve had their email account hacked. And in order to fix the problem, the first thing to do, is to reset their email account password. Thinking of a new password though, is something that can bring people out in a cold sweat.
But the one thing you should never do, is set up an easy to guess password, as it’ll come back to bite you on the bum in no time.
Everyone knows the importance of having secure passwords, but for whatever reason, this has fallen on deaf years for a lot of people.
In a recent survey, the most popular passwords of 2022, has been sports teams, and most shockingly, the word password is still top spot!!!!!!!! I think this finding deserves a few exclamation marks.
By the way, if you use the word ‘password’ for your email account or online websites, you’ll only have yourself to blame if your account gets hacked.
If your password is one from the following list, or have any other dictionary-based password set, change it now!
1. password
2. 123456
3. guest
4. liverpool
5. qwerty
6. arsenal
7. 123456789
8. password1
9. 12345
10. 12345678
11. chelsea
12. charlie
13. abc123
14. liverpool1
15. Parola12
16. football
17. monkey
18. chocolate
19. yuantuo2012
20. letmein
Creating a secure password isn’t rocket science, and if you stick to the following guidelines, that’ll put you in good stead.
1) Password is at least 8 characters long.
2) Contains at least one special character.
3) Contains at least one uppercase and one lowercase character.
4) Contains at least one numerical digit.
5) Isn’t composed of common words, slang or jargon.
6) Isn’t based on repeating patterns or personal information (like your name or email address)
And if you’d like help in coming up with a new password system, which I’ve been using for years, that includes the benefit of having a different password for all your websites and email accounts, without the need to have anything written down, then click here.
