Few things make you feel more helpless than sitting blank-faced at a screen, looking at a flashing cursor and a message saying "PASSWORD INCORRECT" in a disapproving tone. But that was the one for your bank, wasn't it? Or was it? And if it was, then what's your eBay one, again?
The password pressure of modern life means that
61% of us use the same password wherever we can, according to a survey commissioned by digital communications agency @www. In fact, with more than one in 10 people having 50 or more separate online accounts to log into, many are not only using the same password for everything, but also writing all their passwords down in one handy place, such as the noticeboard in their office, a document on their desktop, or a Post-it note stuck to their computer.
While having your child's name and birthdate might seem hard to decipher to you, if someone has access to any information about you, it may be only slightly more clever than having the word "password" as your password. So not very clever at all. But this doesn't mean you have to remember 50 completely unrelated nonsensical things.
There's clearly little harm in using the same password for the low-level-security accounts: a film club, a discussion group, a newspaper website - things that won't bankrupt you if security was compromised. But the more important the account, the more complex and unique to it your password should be. Never use standard dictionary words, for example. Criminals use "bots" that can scroll through every word in the dictionary and try them out as your password in seconds. To make them as secure as you can, try mixing letters with numbers, punctuation and misspellings. And the longer you make them, the better - just because the password is "minimum six characters", doesn't mean you should stop there. Think of a memorable phrase, take the spaces out, or use the first letter of each word.
According to Microsoft, it's not necessarily bad to write passwords down - a piece of paper is going to be much harder to hack for an internet baddie than something stored on your computer or online, as long as it is adequately protected. Hide it, disguise it, put spaces in it, blend it in with other things. And don't write "My banking passwords" at the top of the page.
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