How
To Keep Your Computer Secure
How
would you react if you found out
that your email had been accessed
without your permission? How would
you feel if all your personal and
private information had been leaked
and was available for anyone who
wanted it? Doesn't sound very comforting
does it? Well, there is a way to
avoid all that and remain reasonably
assured that your information is
secure. It's all about good passwords...
Good
passwords are hard to come by. Most
of us have to pick our passwords
rather suddenly without much warning?
Go beyond your name, your partners
name birthdays, favourite colors
etc. You can probably already see
a pattern forming here, can't you?
Ok, now for the scary part: most
passwords are easily guessed and
provide virtually no protection..
on the foot path where everyone
can see it and grab it!
So
how do we fix this? We think up
a better password. Does that mean
something long, awful and cryptic
that you wont remember and will
probably have to write down in case
you forget it? Please no! That's
the sort of password that snooping
people want! So we need to strike
a balance somewhere One that is
much more than some simple detail,
yet cryptic enough that it couldn't
be guessed too easily.
Let's
assume for a second your name is
Andrew. Now, say Andrew wants something
simple, yet based on his name which
will act as a "keyword"
to help him easily recall his password.
We'll mix in some UPPER and lower
case characters and some numbers
to replace letters, also known as
elite speak, or 1337 speak. He might
come up with up AnDr3w. That's decent.
If one of your hobbies is let's
say surfing he might try and combine
his passion with his password. We'll
abbreviate "internet"
as simply "net". Here
come the substitution and we get
"n3T". Excellent! Now
to combine them as two words. Now
most people separate words with
a space " ", but on the
internet, that is best represented
as an underscore "_".
So, we'll combine them both using
our new tricks to get "AnDr3w_n3T".
Excellent!
What
you need is a password that you
don't have to write down, is uncrackable,
simple and comfortably to use. I
say "practically" because
given enough time, any password
in the world can be cracked. But
this one should keep the password
crackers busy and by the time they're
even remotely close to it, he's
changed it and they will have to
begin again.
Why
not think of a nursery rhyme whereas
you take the first letter of every
word and add a number or letter.g.:
"baa baa black sheep have you
any wool" turns into "bbbshyaw"
and "humpty dumpty sat on the
wall" turns into "hdsotw2005".
Let your imagination run wild with
the sorts of passwords you can create
using this technique.
So
the next time you hear of someone's
account being broken into, or see
someone trying to find a sticky
note with their password on it,
just remember, with a password created
using the above techniques you wont
really have to worry as much about
either of those problems.
About the Author
To learn more about online security
and how to keep your data private
visit http://www.Software-Dudes.com
