World Password Day: How Strong is your Password?

Yesterday marked the celebration of World Password Day, a public service announcement created to remind millions of internet users to protect themselves online. World Password Day was created by Intel Security and supported by more than 170 organizations, including Microsoft, Toshiba, and Dell, and has only one request from Internet users – to change one’s passwords.

Robert Siciliano, an online security expert to McAfee, said, ” We found that a lot of users are so overwhelmed about the amount of things they ‘should’ be doing to improve their digital security that they end up doing nothing. So rather than give a laundry list of security advice, we wanted to find one security improvement that people could do in less than five minutes: change their passwords.”

The World Password Day project saw more than one million passwords changed last year, and Siciliano hopes to surpass that this year, especially after the revealing of some major risks in the past few months, including Heartbleed attack.

The World Password Day website created a game targeting the most commonly used, and therefore hacked, passwords. If you see one of your own passwords falling down the screen waiting to be shot down, you know it’s too common to keep and its time to change your password.

Some of the most commonly hacked passwords are things like consecutive numbers, names, any term or phrase you commonly use on social media, and any variation of your own name.

Beyond using safe passwords, you can also increase your cyber safety by using an antivirus, anti-spyware, anti-phishing programs, and maintaining a firewall.

Source: ubergizmo.com, thewire.com