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Choosing the Right Password

Most of us are careless with our passwords. We choose our pets' names, our birthdates and anniversaries—and we never change them. It makes us vulnerable.

Your Internet password/s (I use three) are as important as your pin number. If you do any banking on the Net you need to be very careful. (That's not intended to frighten you—Internet banking is as safe as any other, as long as you take some precautions.)

If another person has your password they can log into your account from their own computer, run up bills for excess time or downloads, can use your account to hack others, or send send spam or post offensive and illegal material.

The first step to securing your password is to stop others knowing it. Don’t paste your password to your monitor and don’t give it out to other users.

You need a password that is difficult to guess. The best passwords are a combination of six or more letters, numbers and symbols. Most fraud is an inside job, from someone you know, that’s why kids' and pets' names and birthdays are out as well.

Password Ideas:

• Use your street number, followed by suburb or street name, followed by post code. If our U3A office used this method the password would ge 3penrith2750. A bit obvious but you get the idea.
• Choose the date and location of your last holiday. Eg, 14Nov08Mollymook. It's worth remembering also that most passwords are case-sensitive, so remember where you put any capitals—so 14Nov08Mollymook is not the same as 14nov08mollymook.
• Use your grandmother's maiden initials followed by her birth year, followed by your mother's maiden initials and her birth year followed by your own (e.g. db01ds23sw45).
• You could substitute numbers for letters in a normal word. So the password "mysterious" would become "myster10us".
• It is also important to vary your passwords. Having the same password for everything is dangerous because if that password is discovered all your accounts are at risk. Try to have two or three and change them on a regular basis. (Of my own three passwords I use one for banking, another for my ISP and other important stuff, and one for unimportant sites (like my on-line chess club) that require a password to enter. The first two are complex groupings of figures and letters which are sufficiently relevant to me to be easily remembered, the third is a word from mythology which also has particular significance but would be difficult to guess.)

All this may all sound alarmist, but your passwords are as good as cash to the wrong people. Even if you are covered for the losses, undoing the damage can be time-consuming and frustrating. Keep your passwords safe.