Online ID Theft Prevention Begins with Building Strong Passwords

June 5, 2009 – 2:56 pm

Part of protecting yourself from identity theft online is creating strong passwords for your multiple online accounts. Many times passwords are simple words, dates or sequential numbers that are used because they’re easy to remember. They’re also easy to crack.

A good password utilizes numbers, regular characters, upper case characters and even special characters. Don’t think about creating a password based on something you already know. Come up with a password that’s completely random and then use it. You will quickly begin to remember it due to repetition. Don’t be afraid to make it lengthy either. Password boxes allow for many character entries (at least 24 in most cases) so make the most of it.

A good method is looking around your office or house and putting together the first two things you see. For instance, I currently look around and see keys and an ipod. Think of how hard your password would be to guess if it was simply “keysipod?” But to beef that up, capitalize some of the letters – “keYsIpod.” You just made your password exponentially harder to crack. Finally use some number before, in, in place of, or after your password…

“34keYs1p0d45.” Behold, nearly impossible password to crack.

If you think it may be to hard to remember just type it out a few times. Muscle memory is a remarkable thing and you’ll be typing it in without thinking in no time. Make sure passwords to accounts like your bank, Paypal, eBay, Amazon, mortgage and more are strongly protected. The password is your only line of defense before being able to access banking and credit information. Protect it well and you’ll be less likely to be a victim in the future.

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