The next tip offered to our readers for National Internet Safety Month involves password protection. Passwords are your personal and secure way of entering into websites that contain sensitive, personal information. However, when not carefully protected, those passwords can fall into the wrong hands and prove to be a way of blocking your entry into those same websites.

Your passwords should be kept somewhere that is secure and that is not easily accessible by others. Never share your passwords on the internet, via email or over the phone.

Make it hard for identity thieves to gain access to or guess your passwords by using the following tips:

-Use a minimum of eight characters. Don’t limit your password to just letters and numbers. Include symbols or characters and make the password as long as is allowable. For instance, 12 characters is a very strong password.

-Avoid using a commonly used word. There are programs used by hackers that will try every word in the dictionary, so be careful of what you choose!

-Passwords you want to avoid include anything that contains your personal information, adjacent keys on your keyboard or your login name.

-You need to change your password at least every 90 days. Every 30 days would be better.

-Use different passwords for different websites. Sing the same password for every account you access online can be a security risk.

Keep in mind that strong passwords can be created by coming up with a phrase that you can easily convert to letters, numbers and symbols using upper and lower case. View this post, for more ideas.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 21st, 2010 at 12:09 pm and is filed under Articles Concerning Identity Theft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.