By Rachel Newman
If you asked much of America’s youth to balance a checkbook, they might stare at you like you had just asked a question in Mandarin. Balancing a checkbook, sending a letter through the USPS, even simple phone calls have become passé in the information age. Most of our activities can now be done on the internet: online banking, email, social media, video chats.
While it may not always be on the forefront of your mind, each of these websites has personal information stored about you in its system. Whether it is a social security or bank routing number or a list of your closest friends and their addresses, that information is dangerous when not protected properly. What is standing between you and a con-artist looking for his/her next payday? Well, it’s only about 6-10 characters.
A good password is crucial to protecting your privacy online, and yet the passwords some consumers create are simple and easy to guess. Wondering if you might be among those with a password that is doing little to protect your personal information? Here’s a test. Raise your hand if you password is among this list, generated by Splashdata, which reveals the 10 most common (Read: easy to guess) passwords.
|
1. password |
6. monkey |
|
2. 123456 |
7. 1234567 |
|
3.12345678 |
8. letmein |
|
4. qwerty |
9. trustno1 |
|
5. abc123 |
10. dragon |
If you have used or are using one or more of the above, you aren’t alone, but you probably aren’t safe either. If you feel like taking another swing at creating the ultimate password, check out these tips to ensure the scammers will stay locked out of your account.
Random punctuation will make your password harder to crack. Instead of using passwords like “supportive” or “intercom,” try “s#pport*ve” or interc@m.
Adhere to the license plate rule. Choose your favorite phrase, and then try to turn it into a seven or eight character vanity plate. For instance, “Start With Trust” might become “gow/trst,” or “Crime never pays” could turn into “crmnvr$$.”
UTFLOEW: Use the first letter of each word. Think of an uncommon phrase and then take the first letter of each word to create a password that is nearly impossible to crack. “I took the road less traveled” becomes “ittrlt.”
Try deliberately misspelling words. Changing around the letter order of words in your password makes it much harder for a con-artist to crack.
So take to cyberspace and start stumping those scammers. For more information about how to create an uncrackable password, visit BBB.org.
