Password — the case when size matters

Let's forget about "every hundredth password in the world is qwerty, password and 123456" and statistics about the annual hacking of billions of such passwords. All these are unverified but obvious facts. But they don't force you to set strong passwords, it's not about you. So, apparently, the big companies thought.

Google interned a student from India who was able to access the company's satellite through the administrative panel, simply leaving the login and password fields blank. Another popular password where you can not put a password at all.

The data of more than 14 million voters in the state of Texas in the United States became available online simply because the server was protected with the password "texas".

United Nations employees store documents in Trello and Google Docs that are not password-protected. The links make them available to everyone.

And what the company "Nutella" thought, which advised its subscribers to use the word Nutella as a strong password, is not clear at all. (https://twitter.com/NutellaGlobal/status/992027051765981184)

What should be a strong password

There were times when a password like "Pa55w0rd" was hard to crack. When such combinations were selected immediately, we began to recommend passwords with special characters, but the combination "P@$5w0rd" is selected in a few hours.

Now, the longer the password, the more secure it is. Selecting a simple but long combination of 12 random numbers and letters will take 24 years. Add just one character to it, and it will take a thousand years. 14 characters — 42 thousand years. 15 characters — 2 million years. A password of 16 letters and numbers is selected over 74 million years. It remains to wish hackers good luck and patience.

How to create strong passwords

Obviously, even a long combination consisting of ones is opened on one-two. It is most difficult to guess random sets of symbols, but the human brain is not strong in this business and inevitably turns to some dates, events, and similar combinations.

To start, use different passwords and security questions for several important accounts. Add two dates known only to you, insert your favorite word between them-the password of 16 characters is ready.

Don't make one name your password. Make a long word by adding the names of your animals, friends, and parents in random order and inserting special characters as separators.

Public numbers like your phone number, home number, zip code, or birthday number are definitely not appropriate. The date of your trip to Turkey along with the city of arrival is already better.

Do not use one, even a long and beautiful word from popular dictionaries, they have all been in the selection database for a long time. Even tradescantia and promiscuity, Yes.

How to store passwords

Better - in the head. As a last resort, use the master password. Roughly speaking, this is a digital secure safe that contains all your passwords. To open the safe, you need a master password. Accordingly, instead of dozens of combinations, you will need to keep in mind only one that opens access to all the others.