Google reminds users to create smart passwords

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This month is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month which means online safety is gonna be much more emphasized (redundant much?haha).

In line with this, Google has come up with a few reminders of obvious-but-often-overlooked practices in keeping your online accounts secure by choosing smart passwords.

Michael Santerre, Google’s consumer operations associate, posted a list of common problems and their solutions in the official Gmail blog. Take a look and see if you have been doing any of these.

Problem 1: Re-using passwords across websites

Solution: Use unique passwords for every account such as selecting a phrase and using the first letter of every world in the phrase. You can also try swapping out letters for symbols.

Problem 2: Using common passwords or words found in the dictionary

Solution: Use a password with a mix of letters, numbers, and symbols. You can also choose two random words and put them together along with symbols.

Problem 3: Using passwords based on personal data

Solution: Your personal data can be easily found in the web social networking sites. Avoid using names of pets or children, birthdays, phone numbers and addresses.

Problem 4: Writing down your password and storing it in an unsecured place.

Solution: Don’t make it easier for others to hack your accounts. That list of complex and hard-to-guess passwords you came up would be useless if someone else found that slip of paper lying beside you computer.

Problem 5: Recalling your password.

Solution: Make sure your password recovery options are up-to-date and secure.

Again, please take the time in making sure your online accounts are safe. Just this week, thousands of Hotmail accounts were exposed through what authorities believe as phishing. Other reports say some Gmail and Yahoo accounts were also exposed. Don’t wait until yours become public too. 🙂

Source: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/choosing-smart-password.html