VLE Help Centre | Liverpool Community College
Be Safe Online – Use Secure Passwords
Using a weak password opens you up to having your online accounts invaded by complete strangers. For example, if your email account becomes compromised a hacker could reset your Facebook password and mess with your Facebook page or spam all your email contacts. Even worse they could gain access to your bank account and paypal account, online fraud like this usually ends up in you losing money. Worse still your identity could be stolen and cause problems for you that could last for years.
This all sounds very scary, but don’t let this put you off using the internet. You can dramatically reduce this risk by following some very basic security practices. These are things anyone can do and you do not need to be a computer expert to follow them.
To create a secure password that is easy for you to remember, follow these simple steps:
- Never use personal information! You should never use personal information as a part of your password. It is very easy for someone to guess personal details like your last name, pet’s name, birth date etc. Even if they don’t know you personally, social networking sites like Facebook make this information easy to find.
- Never use real words on their own. Using modern computers, it would not take long to try every word in a dictionary and guess your password, especially as studies show that the list of most common bad passwords is only 500 words long. Real words are not strong passwords.
- Try to mix different “special” characters. Your password will be much more secure if you mix different types of characters. Use uppercase along with lowercase, include numbers and even special characters such as “%”, “&” or “£”‘.
- Use a phrase to make things easy to remember. Instead of trying to remember a complicated password, you can use something called a passphrase. Think of a sentence that you will remember using a dash (”-”) or and underscore (”_”) instead of a space between words, this allows you to create a long, difficult to guess but easy to remember password.
For example, rather than just having a password like ‘yuw78$_3e’, you could take a sentence such as “Liverpool Community Collage”. Replace the spaces with dashes and mix a few numbers in with it to create…
“@Liverpool_C0mmunity_C0llege99“
A few more tips to help improve the security of your passwords…
- Always use different passwords. You should use a different password for each website you sign up to. That way if one gets compromised the others will still be safe.
- Change your passwords often. You should change your password at least every few months. Try not to re-use passwords often.
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