Staying completely safe online is very difficult but you can stop 99% of threats by just adopting a few simple habits.
One of the biggest areas of risk is our login details for the many websites and services that we access online. Using unique passwords for every membership site sounds simple but it can take some planning. It’s more secure but you will forget the passwords unless you have a system or a tool to help you.
Password Systems
A system means having a standard way of constructing unique passwords for each site that you sign up at. For example, one approach is to have a common core password which you use on all sites and adding some characters from the name of the site.
If your core password was ‘$CoRe83‘ then you might make your Google password ‘Goo$CoRe83‘ … So adding the first 3 letters of the website name with a capital letter to the beginning of the core password.
Notice that the password ends up with capitals, lowercase, symbols and numbers with over 10 characters which is very secure and rememberable with this system. Another great advantage of this system is that in the future you can simply change the core password or lengthen it to improve security.
Password Managers
A tool means a password manager which is software to securely store your passwords for each site. Generally these tools require you to enter a single super password to identify yourself for say an hour and it then remembers all of your passwords and usernames for your sites.
A well known example is OnePassword and there is a popular web based solution called Lastpass which stores passwords in the cloud and has plugins for all major browsers. I use Lastpass for all but the most mission critical passwords … I am not putting my banking passwords in the cloud for you or anybody 🙂
By using these tools together you can ensure that you have secure logins for every site you need and you can remember those passwords easily.
