Web Talk

There are a lot of ways to become vulnerable while you are surfing in the Internet. You can get a virus, a spyware, a trojan, you can be so silly to be deceived by some phishing email convincing you to send your bank account to somebody you don’t know etc. There is anyway another stupid, really stupid way to put your security in jeopardy: using well-known passwords. Wondering if yours is one of them? Here is the list:

1. password
2. 123456
3. qwerty
4. abc123
5. letmein
6. monkey
7. myspace1
8. password1
9. blink182

As usual, in order not to use any silly password for your most important accounts, keep in your mind these simple rules:

• Use long passwords (at least 7-8 characters)
• Don’t use regular, easy-to-guess, simple passwords such as: colorado, newyork, dogandcat, mycomputer, johndoe, ondacivic etc. That’s because there are special software that in order to find out what passwords you are using, scan the whole english vocabulary, also mixing and combine its words.
• Don’t use any of your sensitive data in your passwords such as: Jenny09/10/1978 or marknewyork1454a, bettymegan212-267-1033
• Use special characters, numbers and capital letters in your passwords. A password like this: MyC@mP&t#r89 is more difficult to guess than 123456john…of course.

Bonus

• Don’t give you passwords to anybody.
• Change your passwords often.
• Don’t write your passwords in your cellphone, don’t put your passwords in your wallet, don’t write your passwords in a file on your computer.
• Don’t write your passwords on a piece of paper and stick it under the keyboard.
• Don’t write your passwords on a piece of paper and stick it on your computer’s display. (I saw this dumb thing on some computers of a military base…incredible, isn’t it?)