A report released by security experts Imperva earlier this month revealing the world’s ten

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worst passwords is quite an eye-opener. Is it possible that many of us might be securing our life’s savings with something as ridiculous as ‘123456’ or ‘password’?

Passwords are undoubtedly a trapping of modern living. Email passwords, Internet banking passwords, discussion forum passwords, online trading passwords, e-shopping passwords... it just never ends. How is one supposed to remember them all? Honestly, sometimes ‘iloveyou’ will just have to do, won’t it?

Wrong. And while it is annoying to be reminded continuously about having long, complicated and different passwords for various sites, do take a moment to think about how easy it is to lose our identities, personal communications, and even money from our bank accounts simply because we didn’t spare 10 minutes to create a strong password.

The strength of a password is determined by how easy it is to hack. ‘Sesquipedalianist’ might be a long and complex word, but it is present in any decent English dictionary and therefore easy money for hackers. Similarly, using your daughter’s name would be an equally bad idea. Your passwords might be in danger if they fall into the following categories:

*Anything personally related to you, like telephone number, birth date, address, and the likes

*Dictionary words;

*Common sequences like ‘1234’ or ‘asdf’;

*Common phrases like ‘letmein’ and ‘iloveyou’

*Words with number additions like ‘payal2010’

*Words with simple obfuscation like ‘p@y@l’.

Websites may have their individual password requirements, but as a rule of thumb, a good password should:

*be as long as possible: 8+ characters at the very least

*contain a mix of upper and lower case letters, numbers and special characters (if allowed)

*not be a dictionary word

*not use any known personal information.

Getting into the habit of creating strong passwords is not difficult. One method is to use a base sequence that could be something simple, like your initials and birth date, and then embellish it for different sites. For example, if your initials and birth date give you ‘AN2607’, then your Yahoo password could be ‘y5oAN2607@’, where ‘y5o’ stands for the first and last letters of the site and the number of letters it contains. The ‘@’ is because it is a mail account; your Net banking account could, similarly, end with ‘$’.

Another simple way to create a good password is to use a mnemonic or pass phrase made of something meaningful to you — like a quote or a song — and obfuscate it intelligently. For example, ‘To be or not to be, that is the question’ becomes ‘2Bor!2B?’

Third, use a password generator. Google the term, and you will find many options. These usually result in mind-boggling complex results that one has no way of memorising. No, writing them on a Post-It stuck to your monitor is not the answer. Instead, use a password manager, which means having to remember just one master password you could create using the previous methods.

Finally, when you are done, do visit www.microsoft.com /protect/fraud/passwords/checker.aspx to check password strength.



Payal Dhar is a freelance technology writer