Secure your accounts and personal information with strong passwords
For many, devising a unique password could be a daunting task, especially with individuals juggling across various apps and accounts. Creating passwords that you don’t remember is a waste of time and energy because you tend to forget those passwords. At the same time, too simple passwords are the easiest to crack.
Published Date - 25 November 2022, 06:18 PM
Hyderabad: We use different or the same passwords for bank accounts, social media accounts, and other accounts to keep our personal information safe. But many tend to come up with weak passwords that are prone to hacking. According to the new research by NordPass, the most popular password in India is ‘Password’. Other passwords like ‘12345’, names, and loving words were also commonly used in India.
As per the findings, the top 5 most popular passwords in India are – passwords, 123456, 12345678, bigbasket, and 123456789.
There are several password-cracking software options available in the market to hack passwords or it can simply be cracked by guesswork. Using such easy-to-crack passwords can benefit hackers from gaining access to your personal information.
How to create a unique password
For many, devising a unique password could be a daunting task, especially with individuals juggling across various apps and accounts. Creating passwords that you don’t remember is a waste of time and energy because you tend to forget those passwords. At the same time, too simple passwords are the easiest to crack.
The main aspects of a unique and strong password are length, a mix of letters, symbols, numbers, and special characters. At the same time, the password should not contain any of your personal information like date of birth, surname, name, and other particulars. One should also not include DOBs and names of family members and pets, hobbies, names of your favourite celebrities, address and pin code of your area.
This tip is a no-brainer – use at least an 8 or even 12 characters long password and try different combinations of unrelated numbers and letters, including uppercase and lowercase letters.
Use different passwords for each account you have, and if you have difficulty remembering passwords, use password manager apps like Webroot or NordPass.
Avoid reusing the password, do not share passwords with others, including family and friends, and stay away from writing down passwords, especially in the workplace.
If possible, use two-factor authentication as it gives an additional layer of security. If an unknown person or a hacker tries logging in to your account, he/she must enter an additional chunk of information such as a code or OTP (One-time password).