How to create strong passwords

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One of the best ways avoid hacking or scams is to secure all of important accounts with a strong, unique password.

Passwords help create a wall to protect sensitive information online and to authenticate a person’s identity. They are used for banking, emails, social media platforms and more. Having multiple unique, strong, passwords can help create a sense of safety online.

A strong password, according to cybernews.net, is a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and special symbols, such as punctuation that is at least 12 characters long.

Another characteristic of a strong password is something that is unique to you but difficult to guess. There are many people who still use “password” as part of their password. A strong password would be something that is memorable to you, but not easily found through online research. Avoid birthdays, anniversaries, names of children and pets, or favorite sports teams. Think of a phrase that is not on social media or generally popular to incorporate into your password. Add capitalized and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters such as an exclamation point, question mark, pound key or “at” symbol before, within and after your unique phrase to make it even stronger.

Once you’ve created a strong password it is important to keep it secure. Do not share your password with anyone, even friends or family members, especially over email, text message, or any other form of communication that is not secure. Be wary of strange text messages or emails asking you to change your password, and always go through a trusted and authentic website to change your password if you believe there has been an unauthorized attempt to log into your account.

Another way to keep your security safe is to have strong and unique passwords for each account. If a scammer is able to access your password for one site, they will try to use the same password on other site. Using unique passwords for each of your banking, email, and social accounts ensures that there will not be multiple hacks if one occurs.

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is one more step in securing your accounts. MFA requires two forms of authentication, which means a person will need to type in their password, then type in a one-time code sent to their text messages or email. Some apps on an iPhone will even use the face recognition feature as an option for a multi-factor authentication.

Creating strong, unique passwords with multi-factor authentication for each account can provide a peace of mind in online security.