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How to choose strong passwords

By Codrut Nistor

Posted in Online-services, Software, Uncategorized

Setting up the passwords for your accounts is a very important thing but everybody choose simple passwords like their cats name their girlfriends/boyfriends name and so on. For accounts that are not very important you can choose anything. But when you set up your Paypal account your email account even your Facebook account be sure you will choose a strong password.

What is a strong password? Considering that anyone can break a password that is shorter than 8 letters in less that 2 hours you should try a longer password. If you choose one with 12 letters it will take more that 17000 years. Another tip is to use letters numbers and special characters. Change the letters with number or use that so called hacker writing style. For example don't write download. Instead write d0wnl04d. It is almost the same but is harder to crack. Or if you want to put your girlfriends name instead of Elisabeth you can write 3l1s4b3th :)

To check how strong id your password try the following website: How Secure is your passwod.

If you don't know what passsword to choose you can try an online password generator. Just choose the length of the password and if you want to insert symbols too.

If it is difficult to remember all that letters and numbers use a password management software. The best password management software is KeePass Password Safe. KeePass supports the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES Rijndael) and the Twofish algorithms to encrypt its password databases. This way your passwords are stored in a safe place.  And let's don't forget that this program is free and is available for any version of Windows PocketPC and Smart Devices Windows Phone 7 IPhone Blackberry and more.