Password security
It's important to keep customer data secure.
1. Use a different password for each website/app, and don’t just vary it by a number. It’s surprisingly easy to get hacked and you may not even realise it. Even the biggest multinational companies get hacked, and if you’ve used the password and email combination for their site on other sites, those other sites are effectively hacked too.
2. Change your password periodically, and don't write it down, either electronically or on paper. Don’t keep a password you’ve been given, especially if it was emailed to you. Imagine if your email was hacked. Change it now (see how), and we’ll send a reminder every 6 months.
3. Long passwords are good. An all-lowercase letters password that’s 8 characters long can be cracked in 22 hours. Add 4 more characters and it’ll take 1,000 years.
4. Mix it up with uppercase, numbers and symbols. That same 8 letter lowercase password that can be hacked in 22 hours would be safe for 7 years if it were a mix of different types of characters. And a mixed 12 character password would take 164 million years to hack!
5. Avoid the obvious. Names, birthdays or any single word are all a poor basis for a password, even if you add something on the end. Similarly, 1234567890 and qwerty are no-nos. Do more than just capitalising the first letter and adding a number or character to the end - try a short sentence or 3 random words. Number substitutions, like 1 for I, can be useful but combine them with something else too.
6. Consider using a password manager, which will create complex passwords for you and look after them so you only have to remember one for your password manager. Depending on which one you choose and how you use it you may have to pay a small subscription fee. (Google Chrome has a free basic in-built one but browser-based managers may not be as secure as others.)
A good trick to create a complex but easy to remember password is to use a line from a song or poem – e.g.
Two butterflies went out at noon
And waltzed above a stream
Using the first letter of each word and some number/symbol substitutions this could become 2bwo@12Awaas which looks like nonsense but is easy to recall if this is your favourite line.
For a few uncomfortable truths about how easy passwords are to guess, watch Michael McIntyre's comedy clip about passwords.
1. Use a different password for each website/app, and don’t just vary it by a number. It’s surprisingly easy to get hacked and you may not even realise it. Even the biggest multinational companies get hacked, and if you’ve used the password and email combination for their site on other sites, those other sites are effectively hacked too.
2. Change your password periodically, and don't write it down, either electronically or on paper. Don’t keep a password you’ve been given, especially if it was emailed to you. Imagine if your email was hacked. Change it now (see how), and we’ll send a reminder every 6 months.
3. Long passwords are good. An all-lowercase letters password that’s 8 characters long can be cracked in 22 hours. Add 4 more characters and it’ll take 1,000 years.
4. Mix it up with uppercase, numbers and symbols. That same 8 letter lowercase password that can be hacked in 22 hours would be safe for 7 years if it were a mix of different types of characters. And a mixed 12 character password would take 164 million years to hack!
5. Avoid the obvious. Names, birthdays or any single word are all a poor basis for a password, even if you add something on the end. Similarly, 1234567890 and qwerty are no-nos. Do more than just capitalising the first letter and adding a number or character to the end - try a short sentence or 3 random words. Number substitutions, like 1 for I, can be useful but combine them with something else too.
6. Consider using a password manager, which will create complex passwords for you and look after them so you only have to remember one for your password manager. Depending on which one you choose and how you use it you may have to pay a small subscription fee. (Google Chrome has a free basic in-built one but browser-based managers may not be as secure as others.)
A good trick to create a complex but easy to remember password is to use a line from a song or poem – e.g.
Two butterflies went out at noon
And waltzed above a stream
Using the first letter of each word and some number/symbol substitutions this could become 2bwo@12Awaas which looks like nonsense but is easy to recall if this is your favourite line.
For a few uncomfortable truths about how easy passwords are to guess, watch Michael McIntyre's comedy clip about passwords.
