Common password errors

Posted in 'Identity Theft' by Barry Stamp

10 January 2012

One of the easiest things to do to tighten up your personal security is to think carefully about the passwords you use on the internet.

More and more companies are requiring their customers to use more sophisticated passwords, which are not so easily guessed, and to include numbers and signs to defeat attempts to break them through automated ‘dictionary hacking’. But, being human beings, we tend to think along the same lines, and often come up with exactly the same password, nomatter what level of complexity is asked for.

When you think about setting up a new password, try to avoid using your first name and the number 1 after it. Or, if not the number one, then 123, or your date of birth in 2205 format. All of these combinations are pretty obvious to a fraudster. If you are a football fan, arsenal1 or [yourfootballclubhere]1, will have been thought of by many before you, it’s neither original nor secure.

Replacing the letter ‘s’ with a 5 to give Pa55word, or going the extra mile with an ‘0’ to make Pa55w0rd must be one of the most commonly used passwords there is, alongside such giants as Trustno1 and Letmein/L3tm31n.

More secure and original passwords contain a mixture of capital letters, lower case letters, numbers and other characters and are at least 8 characters long. Avoid using your mother’s maiden name, date or place of birth, and instead, consider using the name of another relative together with their date of birth, and with a few other characters added to give something along the lines of UncleAlbert_2409!

Or if you have a favourite song, use the lyrics to construct something great. For example, the Eagles classic Hotel California gives us ‘mirrors on the ceiling, pink champagne on ice’ – could easily translate into Motc^pco-ic3. That’s far more secure than London2012, a current common choice.

If you Google your chosen password, this will give you a good indicator of how unique it is.

For more tips on keeping yourself safe from identity thieves, we recommend that you download to your Kindle app or Kindle our industry acclaimed handbook, Identity Theft Prevention and Victim Assistance which costs only 77p. It’s a very small price to pay for peace of mind.