Are you sick of your friends hacking into your MySpace account and turning you into a 45-year-old transgender swinger who’s expecting his first child? Or tired of your ex- girlfriend getting on your hotmail account and sending out a group email telling everyone in your family that you’re gay? Well, get a new password.
Using the same password for multiple Web sites makes it easier for people to hack into your personal accounts. Another example of bad password usage would be using something like your last name, or your girl/boyfriends name. People who know you would be able to figure that out easily, especially, if you have it written on a Post-It that’s sticking to your computer screen.
Using simple passwords is another common mistake. Think of the first password you ever had, it was probably something like “ABC123.” Passwords that are simple variations of your phone number, name, nickname, or generic are more likely to be broken.
Celyste Burns is a freshman psychology and agriculture major who is confident that her accounts are safe.
“It would be hard to hack into my account. I use college names and my dogs name. I don’t think my best friend could get into my account, she might know my dogs name but doesn’t know that it could be my password,” Burns said.
A better solution would be to create a password specific to each account. For example, create a “core” password and modify it depending on the website. Let’s say if your core password is your initials and pets name, “MSapollo”, and you are logging into MySpace add an “M” to the beginning of your core password, “mMSapollo.” Another option would be to add numbers and letters, this too would make it more difficult to hack.
Elizabeth Baker doesn’t mess around with her passwords. She knows people might try to get into her email, bank account, or MySpace.
“I change my password every three months. I usually have a few that I alternate between. I try to use the same password, or one like it, for each account. Its bad because all my passwords are a variation of the original, so if you knew it you could easily guess my other ones,” she said.
You can also add a layer of variation to your core password. If you feel that your core password isn’t strong enough, take the last letter of your password and convert it to the corresponding number on a cell phone keypad.
Austin Ek has learned the importance of password security.
“My password is my or my friends’ group organization. I sometimes use my phone number too, but I might change the area code”, said Ek “I forget passwords sometimes but I use the same general password for each account but I add different numbers or initials.”
If you have to write down your passwords, keep this information in a safe place like a safe deposit box. That way if something were to happen, someone would not be able to gain access to that information or access the account.