The Internet has become more than a simple means of communication. Everyday we access countless services on the Web. With e-mail and online banking, online news subscriptions and even online tax returns, from now on our most confidential personal data are all online. And to be accessed, each of these services requires a password. How are we supposed to keep it all together and remember each password correctly? By making note of them in a file on our computer? That's the one thing you shouldn't do, the experts warn. A good password shouldn't be written down anywhere, because unfortunately there is a real risk of having it stolen by a hacker.
Make it long, make it complex and change it regularly. These are the three commandments when it comes to composing a good password. Your password must not be easy to guess. So don't use your name, your partner's name, your dog's name or your birthday. A hacker, or any other malevolent person, trying to access your data will try these first. But this alone is not enough to create a secure password. Hackers use special software programs that try different combinations of words and digits to discover passwords. All the words in the dictionary, including proper nouns, are recorded in the database of these programs, which can also search using different combinations of words together. So using "sophiealecole" as your password won't protect you. In order to face up to this risk, it is recommended that you choose a password at least eight characters long (the length makes it more difficult to crack) and also include characters such as +, #, !, *. How to remember such a complex password, especially if it's not supposed to contain any familiar words? There are some techniques for creating a secure but memorable password. One of them is to take the first letters of a sentence and add on a few special characters or numbers.
Examples of secure passwords: "the adventures of Sherlock Holmes" gives us "taosh" as the first part of our password. Then add the number of letters of each word in the sentence: 310286. "taosh 310286" may seem difficult to remember on first sight, but all you have to do is think of Sherlock Holmes and calculate the number of letters. Here's another method. Replace the vowels of a word with a string of memorised characters. Example: the word "constitution" could give us "c+nst*t!#n" or "c1nst2t3t45n". Don't forget to change your password regularly too.
Although these techniques allow you to create a secure password, they do not fully protect you against Trojans, software programs that memorise keystrokes, or attempts to hack other confidential data such as bank card numbers. In addition to having up-to-date antivirus software and a firewall, which are absolutely necessary for protecting your computer, it is also in your own interests to equip yourself with tools designed to protect sensitive data. There are special software programs that allow you to store these data in encrypted format.
