How Strong Are Your Passwords?

Online security has almost come to mean having a strong password for your accounts especially those that you use to gain access to some financial details.

Identity theft is prevalent in our society at present and you, as an individual, need to protect yourself against hackers and account intruders having no good intent but to rip you off or the hard earned money that you have in the bank or use your identity in doing some other crimes.

It is therefore important that you know how to some basic precautionary steps that will protect your online accounts and your identity as an individual as well. Setting strong passwords for your accounts helps a lot in ensuring that your accounts are safe even from the best and the grandest hackers and cyber-crime syndicates that operate nowadays.

Here are some tips you can do in setting up strong passwords for your account:

* Think of a password that is at least 8 characters long.

* It should not contain any of the following: Username, Real Name, Company Name, Birthday and other public information about you.

* It should not contain a complete spelling of a dictionary word.

* It should be something that is unique from all the other passwords that you have for your other accounts.

* A strong password contains each of the following characters:

* Combination of uppercase and lower case letters.

* Numbers

* Symbols used in sentences, mathematics and other fields (, #, $, *, &,! , etc.)

Another very important thing that you should remember is to avoid any email that you receive asking you of any information that is related to your bank account or any other financial details. Most criminals on the web disguise themselves as bank personnel claiming to have found something wrong on your account and therefore, they need your details to gain access to it.

There are lots of people that are also trying to do some “Phishing”. This term means that they are hunting for people’s financial details via the use of web pages that look like legitimate ones asking for a username and a password but in truth, they just want to find out your username on other accounts that will give them the money or anything else that they want. Be extra cautious with all the things that you do online. You never know when you might get victimized by account hackers and identity thieves that will surely leave you a total wreck!