By Sabrina Karl
It might seem identity theft is such a common problem in today’s world that there’s little you can do to prevent it, other than hope you’re not among the unlucky victims. But there are lines of defense, and one of the most effective is simple: use strong passwords.
Millions of Americans reuse one password for numerous accounts, keep the password for years without changing it, use a single common word (“password” is among the most common), or use easily guessable personal details such as their birthdate or pet’s name. Still others use sequential characters or common keyboard paths, such as 123456, qwerty, 111111, abc123, or 123123.
So how do you choose hard-to-crack passwords? One of the smartest moves is using a password manager, which stores all of your passwords in an ultra-secure, encrypted data locker. These apps also offer random password generators to create long, complex passwords (which you won’t have to remember).
Still, you’ll occasionally need to create a password from scratch, including when setting the master password for your password manager. In these instances, use at least 15 characters, and consider mixing uppercase, lowercase, numeric, and symbol characters. Also avoid substituting numbers for letters (e.g, 3 for E and 8 for B). Hackers are entirely wise to this common trick.
If you prefer using words or phrases, two good tactics are to link 4-5 capitalized words that have no connection to one another with a special character, such as Lagoon#Coffee#Holiday#Cobra#. Or, craft a sentence unique to you and use the first two letters of every word. For instance, turn “My favorite crayon color is Burnt Sienna” into MyFaCrCoIsBuSi.
By combining use of a password manager with clever strategies for manual passwords, you can dramatically reduce the odds of identity thieves gaining access to your personal accounts.