Creating a strong password for your personal user accounts is one of the most important things you will do as a Computer User. Contrary to what you might think, most people use severely under-complex passwords on some of the most important accounts you could have, social media, banking, etc. We will go over tips for you to keep in mind when creating a powerful new password as well as maintaining your passwords in a secure manner. Let’s dive in,

1. Don’t Reuse Your Passwords

If you reuse passwords, you run the risk of all of your accounts that share a password being compromised. When hackers gather your email and password for one account, they can try to reuse that information on other sites in the hopes that you have reused your email and password giving them clear access in.

2. Use a Password Manager

There are free password managers available online that allow you to store all of your passwords in what is essentially a secure locker. You can have multiple different passwords for each website you visit and not have to remember all of them. You just need to remember the master password that allows you access to your password manager.

3. Don’t Write Down Or Share Your Passwords

should seem like common sense, but we see this more than you could imagine. Follow this simple rule!

4. Don’t Rely Strictly On Letters And Numbers

You might have assumed that changing “password” to “p4ssw0rd” was pretty slick. However, swapping letters for numbers is common. Both software and humans are testing for passwords that use this method. It’s common to change a “e” for a “3” and so on. Make sure to include special characters like “!@#$%^&*()”. These are another layer to help make your password even more difficult for computer software to guess.