Is Your Password Strong?

It's the most natural thing in the world. Your online bank wants you to choose a secure password, so you quickly think about the names of your children, spouse, or maybe their birthdays to create a easy to remember password. You decide on your sons first name; Nathan, then add on his birth year... just to mix it up and create a "secure" password. So you type in Nathan1981 for your online bank password. Months pass by then one day you receive a letter from your bank; That's odd, an NFS charge you can't explain.

What could have happened? You're so careful, and what about the other checks or automatic bill pay transactions thats are due to be withdrawn to cover this months bills? How did this happen?

The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broke.

-Samuel Johnson

Your password simply wasn't secure. Scammers know all about our laziness and human nature. They know if they can glean enough personal details from following people on Myspace or Facebook, they can eventually get enough information to "crack" many peoples online accounts. There is good reason why online fraud is the fastest growing online enterprise, and business is good for crooks who target weaknesses in our human nature. We all use social networks, and most of us have a long list of friends online. You can't always protect yourself from every online threat, but most cases of online theft and fraud could have been avoided if the victims passwords would not have been "Personal" to them.

When choosing passwords for your important online accounts it's a recommended practice to choose a password that is unique for each account. The best passwords are those that do not contain words found in any dictionary, as well as any common names. This includes pet names. Use upper and lowercase letters, and a combination of special characters.  There are a few very good free password generator applications that can be used to create strong passwords. Use one and invest $12.00 in a USB thumbdrive. Most come with an application built in that you can use on any Windows based PC to password protect the device. Create a Microsoft Excel file, store your passwords and logins in the excel file. Password protect the excel file and keep it on the USB drive. This gives you a double layer of protection, and if the USB drive is ever lost, anyone finding the USB drive will have to format the device to be able to use it.

It would be best to not carry the thumb drive around with you. Keep it at home and resolve to not log into your online financial accounts on any other computer besides your own (a recommendation of it's own).

Password Generator download.

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