Hackers have plenty of tricks when it comes to making you their victim. They can send you emails containing viruses and malware. They can send you links that go to malicious websites. They can get you through phony social media accounts and apps that look like legitimate sources.
There are ways you can reduce your chances of getting hacked. Tap or click here for seven secrets these crooks don’t want you to know about.
A weak password is the easiest route for a hacker to take to get into your accounts. You have plenty of resources to help create complex passwords, from browsers to password managers. Some websites even perform a similar function. We’ll go over one and give you some additional tips.
Strong passwords
You don’t want a password to make sense to anyone else. It shouldn’t contain full words or anything that could be traced back to you, including an important date in your life. You want a complex password with letters, numbers and symbols. Tap or click here for more strong password tips.
For some assistance, you can turn to Roboform’s Password Generator. This site takes the guesswork out of password creation. It lets you customize your own password, with options you may never have considered before.
First, choose how many characters you want your password to be. One that is six to 15 characters is considered weak, while 16 and more is strong.
Once you made your selection, move on to what you want to include or leave out: symbols, numbers, lowercase/uppercase characters and more.
Next, click Generate Password to get a new password in the blank field. Don’t like it? Click the refresh as many times as you want and you’ll get a new password each time. Below it, you’ll find a suggestion to help you remember what it is, though this can be obscure.
Below the password generator is a long list of tips for password creation and advice on protecting yourself from exposure to hacks and malware. Tap or click here for the best free iOS password manager.
How to keep your password handy
While many sites can create passwords, they can’t remember them for you. You can store them in the browser of your choice. Browsers like Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge will give you a prompt offering to save a password when logging into a site or account.
You can go into your browser’s settings and find a list of saved passwords as well as options for turning the automatic password creation prompt on or off.
