At the start of each year, many people make resolutions to better themselves, but for many of them those efforts have dissipated by the time February rolls around. Well, the tech world is here to help with a new holiday that promotes personal technological responsibility: International Change Your Password Day.<\/p>\n
The faux holiday began last year as the brainchild of the folks at Gizmodo<\/a>, and it has caught on for good reason: Our lives are online now. This includes our financial information such as online bank and credit card accounts, our social media hubs and even just our email, which likely contains information ranging from our vital documents to our deepest, darkest secrets.<\/p>\n These are all things hackers want to get their hands on and the easiest way for them to do that is by coming through the front door \u2014 the account login. And we\u2019re not talking about some guy sitting in front of a computer trying different words that pop into his head. No, today\u2019s hackers have high-powered programs that can cycle through a staggering variety of potential combinations in seconds. That\u2019s why it\u2019s important to have unique, hard-to-crack passwords and passphrases that incorporate non-alphanumeric symbols, scrambled letters and hints to things that you, and you alone personally know. Password security<\/a>is a key component of good online hygiene.<\/p>\n Hopefully you know this by now, but simple words and phrases are bad \u2014 your dog\u2019s name, your mother\u2019s maiden name and your niece\u2019s birthday are all easily found on your Facebook page, among other places. Don\u2019t use these things. Also, don\u2019t get cute by using something like \u2018password\u2019 or \u2018keepout.\u2019 In fact, a general rule of thumb is that if it is or uses a word in the dictionary, you shouldn\u2019t use it as a password. Hence the recommendation to use non-alphanumeric symbols or scrambled words \u2014 putting the second letter of a word last and the last letter first, for instance \u2014 and if a password-protected site offers passphrase protection, so much the better.<\/p>\n