What is the best password to use?
The most commonly used passwords are “password,” birthdays, anniversary dates, hometowns, and pet names. So don’t use any of those! Create a more secure password by mixing 8-16 letters, numbers, and punctuation marks together. This should stop most people from being able to guess your password.
Now that you have a perfect password, I have some bad news. You shouldn’t use the same password across lots of websites. The current trend in online account theft is that hackers attack a website with lots of members to steal usernames and passwords. They take that login information and try it across email, financial, and social networking websites.
So you need to use secure passwords and you’ll need lots of them. You can use the Keychain Access application to generate random passwords and save them to your Mac. Open Keychain Access and press plus (+), then click on the key icon to generate a random password. If you need to access your passwords across multiple computers, you’ll need a third-party password manager like 1Password. Just make sure you can remember the password that you used to protect your password manager. Once a year, print a copy of your passwords and store it with your confidential documents.
Published November 30, 2010 3:10 PM
Last modified on November 25, 2011 1:18 PM
Related Links
How do I password protect a set of files with an encrypted disk image?How can I change another user's password?
I don’t know my password.
How do I recover a password I forgot for a website or email account?
How do I reset my user login (system) password?
How do I reset my keychain password?
How can I change my user login (system) password if I know my current password?
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