Weak passwords are more like cheap locks – easy to open or crack! And once open, the intruders can do whatever they want to. Not many people know, but stolen passwords are worth more to cyber-criminals than your Credit Card details. Researchers state that passwords of social media accounts are often the entry points for cyber-criminals. People generally use same user-ID and passwords for all their accounts and this is what help hackers to breach their accounts. Almost 80% of account breaches are due to weak passwords.
Passwords are basically the first line of defense against unapproved access to your online accounts. The stronger your password, more protected your email accounts and social networking accounts will be from hackers.
Kaspersky Secure Password Checker website
What are Strong Passwords
Passwords for your email accounts or social networking accounts should be strong and unique. A standard definition of Strong Password states that it should consist at least 8 characters with a combination of numbers, symbols and letters in both upper and lower case. More the characters, stronger is your password.
It is always a good idea to analyze and check strength of your password using some software. There are also many good websites availabe, which one can use to check the strength of password. Microsoft also has its own Microsoft Password Checker which let you check the strength of your password.
Kaspersky Secure Password Check is another reliable password checking website. This is an official website launched by the security firm Kaspersky. It lets you check how strong your password is and how long an average home computer will approximately take to crack your password.
It also give you funny facts – for example if it shows an average computer will bruteforce attack your password in 12 days, the website will give a fact that “It would take this long to travel 45378 miles in your new Ferrari” or if your password is very strong and approximate time is shown as 1000+ centuries to crack it, the website will give a funny fact, “Bender Rodriguez would steal everything valuable in the Universe in that time. Including your password”.
The website will let you know if your password is too short or you are using repeated characters, numbers or letters. It will also show an error if you are selecting widely used combinations as your password or using the keyboard sequences in your password.
Tips for creating a strong password
- You should never keep same user-ID or passwords for different accounts.
- Make sure that your password is strong with at least 8 characters long.
- You should never include your username, real name or company name in your password.
- Never use a complete word as your password.
- Keep it different from your previous passwords.
- Creating passwords using ASCII Art is also a great idea if you want to create strong passwords.
You can visit the interesting Kaspersky Secure Password Check here.
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