Password Safety

If your password shows up in any dictionary in any language, you have a week password.  Try making it something hard to guess.  Here are a few tips when choosing a password.

• Say your name is Brian.  Try mixing the current year into it like so: "B2R0I0A8N"  I used all caps but most systems like webmail and banking sites will allow both upper and lower case, so "BrIaN" and "brian" are two totally different passwords.  Mixing caps in is a great way to make a strong password but again don't use easy words weather mixed with numbers or not.
• NEVER save your password in a text file on your computer.  These files are easy to find and any decent "hacker" can find it and have access to everything.
• Use a password generator and a password storage program.  There are many out there but Siber Systems makes a program called Roboform.  This program saves password in an encrypted set of files on your computer.  When you use Internet Explorer or FireFox, Roboform will auto fill the login name and password for the sites you have visited in the past and saved your login name and password.  It even includes a great password generator.  Roboform has a free version but only stores 10 passwords after 30 days.  It is only $29.95 to buy .  Cheap when you think of all the money it cold save you if your banking password were to fall in the hands of say the 17 year old hacker down the street who wants to clean your bank account.
• Never reveal your password to a site clicked in an email or someone calling you on the phone.  Phishing is a scam that hackers around the world have been using for years.  Many people around the world make thousands of dollars a month using phishing scams.  Here is an example of a phishing scam:  You check your email and you have a letter that "appears" to be from your bank.  So you open it.  The email, looking and sounding official, tells you that your bank is updating its information and needs you to login to the site.  So you, thinking nothing of it, click the link in the email.  The link appears to take you to your bank's website login page.  It is really taking you to a page hosted by a hacker but you have no idea because everything looks authentic even the address in the address bar can be faked.  So you type in your user name, password, bank account number, and so on.  Then you submit it and a thank you page comes up.  Of course they are thanking you.  You are now broke and they are richer by however much money was in your bank account.  This is just one of many examples of phishing scams.  ALWAYS, open your browser yourself and physically type the site address to your secure stuff like your bank account, etc. or use your favorites/bookmarks.