Passwords that are three characters long take less than a second to crack. The longer and more complex your password is, the longer this process takes. The more advanced method is to use what is known as a “brute force attack.” In this technique, a computer program runs through every possible combination of letters, numbers, and symbols as fast as possible to crack your password. The most rudimentary way is to personally target you and manually type in letters, numbers, and symbols to guess your password. Hackers use multiple methods for trying to get into your accounts.
Here are eight tips for ensuring your passwords are as strong as possible. And if you use that simple password across multiple accounts-as a reported 92 percent of online users do-that puts all of your data at risk.
According to a recent security study, the most commonly used web passwords are things like “123456” and “password.” Sure, they’re easy to remember, but that makes them just as easy to hack. We’ve been on the internet for almost 35 years, yet we still haven’t learned our lesson about online passwords.