How secure is your password?

It’s all about privacy: it doesn’t matter if it’s your e-mail account, your files or your credit card. Anytime you have to decide a new password you wonder which one will be the best to protect your stuff. You wish you could find out a combination of letters and numbers that no expert hacker could find out.

The bad news is that there’s no perfect formula to avoid an eventual violation, the good news is that there are some safety tips you can take note to prevent it.

Don’t choose any on this list

In 2007, PC Magazine compiled a list of the “10 worst passwords”. Although this research is not very recent, it is worth to make sure ours is not in the list:

password
123456
qwerty
abc123
letmein
monkey
myspace1
password1
blink182
(your first name)

If you want more, you can check the top 500 worst passwords compiled by Mark Burnett’s in his book Perfect Passwords: Selection, Protection, Authentication.

Avoid personal details

You’ve probably heard about this one, but there are still a lot of people who pick their birthday, children’s names, home address or favorite team. They are certainly easy to guess, so use your imagination and think a little bit more.

Read the rest of the article here