ID Theft Prevention Tip: Create Safe Passwords

How to Create Safe Passwords to Prevent Identity Theft

Passwords are the keys, so to speak, to accessing personal information stored on your PC or online accounts.

By creating safe passwords, you are taking an important step toward preventing cyber thieves from stealing this information and using your identity for online transactions, even opening new accounts.

Oftentimes, these identity theft attacks may occur without you even knowing it, at least for a while. So to prevent this from happening, it's advisable to create strong passwords and keep them well protected.

While password systems vary, here are a few basic tips on how to create a safe password to counter such attacks:

* Avoid repeated or consecutive characters. Passwords such as “55555”, “56789”, “abcdefg”, or any adjacent letters on the keyboard does not make your passwords secure.

* Use a 'Character Combo.' If you press down the “shift” key on your keyboard, Case variations and a variety of symbols can be added to your password to make it stronger. These symbols can include punctuation marks or any symbols that are unique to your language. By combining letters, numbers or symbols, you are making it difficult for malicious users to guess your passwords.

* Create longer passwords. The more characters you add to your password – may it be letters, numbers or symbols – the safer your password will become. It is said that a 20-character password made up of random numbers and letters is about 35,000 times stronger than a 10-character password made up of a combination of letters, numbers and symbols.

Use a sentence or phrase that you will not forget. In developing a strong password, think of a phrase such as “my blue car has four doors”. You can then convert the sentence into a password, such as “mbchfd” or “mbch4d”.

* Avoid Look-alike substitutions – Malicious users who may possibly crack your passwords cannot be fooled by look-alike replacements, such as replacing “a” with “@” or “s” with “$” or “o” with “0”, as in “P@$$w0rd”. However, if you wish to include look-alike substitutions, strengthen your passwords by adding case variations, misspellings and character length.

Once you've created a strong password, commit it to memory. But if you feel you must write it down, needless to say, keep it in a secure place.