A High-Quality Password is your first line of defense against not only internet hackers but ATM theives, bank fraud, online payment systems and more. For those of us who use the internet to provide financial information it is a dangerous game we play.

While it is highly believed having a secure password alone cannot protect you from identity theft, it truly DOES protect you from most wanna-be or newbie type hackers. Put it together with other measures of security, a complex password should be able to protect you even from the experts. So let us examine just what a truly secure password really is.

Face it - we ALL become apethetic to this from time to time; we are so busy with our day to day tasks we don't really need ONE more thing to remember. At the same time that is why there are still these things called pens and paper! :] Some of us become more apethetic more than others. It can even get SO bad that we use the SAME password for EVERY bloody account we have from banking to social networking sites! THAT IS DANGEROUS. A very dangerous game to be playing with your livly-hood.

--TIPS--

#1 - The over-all length of your password does MORE for your safety than the passwords level of difficulty in being short. The more varied your passwords are, the better your chance of keeping security breach isolated to a single account of whatever type it happens to be.

#2 - Never leave the default password(s) live that come automatically set from the factory. This sounds obvious but a lot of people continue to use these pre-assigned passwords. There are a multitude of reasons why this isn't safe; I am sure you can guess many of them.

#3 - Don't ever use letters or numbers in a sequence; such as 567 or EFG. You are looking to create a password that would not be easily guessed or hacked. Always Remember! -- Your password is the only barrier you have to keep everyone but you away from your private/financial information. When you read that in black and white like that I hope it Really sinks in just how important your password creation IS.

#4 - We have all been told to mix letters and numbers together to make more unbreakable type passwords. We have been warned against the dangers of using social security numbers(DAH!) , birthday dates, family names, etc... ANY easily guessed information -- pet names for another example which is another one very common people use. If you were to use your pets name with one number in it - it would take a *brute-force* attacker approximately 2 minutes to figure it out, I kid you not. If an identity thief who already knows something about you, that name or birthdate may not be hard for them figure out at all.

#5 - Never use common words in the English language or the language of your home country. Using real words is NOT safe. Brute Force and other similar software random word generators run through words in seconds and make it super easy for hackers to gain entry into another persons computer network.

#6 - Never use any type of banking PIN number code as a password!! If someone is able to hack into your computer system at work, or your online bill pay account at the utilities company you use; you don't certainly don't want them to have access to your pin code too!

#7 - Instead of thinking of a word or a name or a date, think instead in terms of a sentence that would be easy to remember. The less generic your sentence is, the stronger it will be. Instead of using something such as "Tuesday is Yoga Class" think in terms of something more unique like "Joe got a new computer on a Monday".

#8 - Make your password program is case sensitive! This is one of the very BEST things you can do for your security. Then, don't vary your letters and/ or numbers systematically. Randomly go through your sentence and capitalize letters that will be easy for you to remember so your sentence now looks like this: "jOegoTaneWcompUteroNamonDay."

#9 - Use symbols for some of the letters in your sentence. You can play with the length of your password now. Just remember that passwords which are over 16 letters are strongest. When you are done, your password will look something like this: "jOe$oT#neWcompU&eronamon$ay." Then be CERTAIN to write your password down and place in a secure location. If you don't write your password down and you forget it, then all the time you spent creating your unbreakable password has been wasted plus you now can't get into your own account(s)!!

#10 - Remember that no single one of these procedures by themselves will keep your accounts safe but if you use ALL of them, you stand an excellent chance of Never being Hacked!!

In conclusion I will leave you with a sentence from the beginning of this Hub:

Always Remember! -- Your password is the only barrier you have to keep everyone but you away from your private/financial information. When you read that in black and white like that I hope it Really sinks in just how important your password creation IS.

Best Reagrds, Melanie