With the growing amount of personal, confidential and financial information stored digitally, along with the threats posed by hackers and security breaches, it is vital that user accounts are fully protected. One of the most basic and very important ways is to create strong passwords.
Cybercriminals practice several strategies to steal/discover victims' passwords and the most common ones are:
Brute Force Attacks: Password guessing attempts, testing all possible combinations of characters until the right one is found.
Keylogging: There are malicious programs called keyloggers, which are installed on a computer in order to record all the keystrokes typed by the user.
Phishing: The user is tricked into providing personal information and passwords, usually done through fake emails or messages that appear to be from legitimate sources and even well-known websites, such as banks and social networks.
Data theft: Criminals are able to obtain passwords through poorly protected or compromised databases.
Darkweb: A lot of personal information and credentials obtained by attackers in carried out attacks are sold from the darkweb.
Sniffing: A technique in which network traffic is intercepted to capture information that is transmitted over the network.
How to Create Strong Passwords
By following the steps below, the user's online security is maintained for any account he has, preventing the disclosure of his data as well as fraud. The steps are:
Use a combination of characters: The more complex the password is with a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and symbols, the harder it will be to crack. Include a combination of all these elements so that the password is strong.
Create long passwords: Passwords need to be at least 12 characters long to be secure against account hacks. That way, cybercriminals will have a hard time guessing it.
Change it regularly: From time to time passwords need to be changed to reduce the risk of someone accessing your account using the old password.
Apply different passwords to different accounts: When a hacker discovers the victim's password, if the accounts have the same password, the damage will be greater, with multiple accounts hacked. Never use the same password multiple times!
Avoid personal information: Passwords that may contain your name, date of birth and other things about yourself are easy to discover and use to access your accounts improperly.
Use a password manager: For unique and strong passwords to be created, a manager can help for each of the user accounts, and also remember them without needing to be stored in a text file or paper, which makes it easier vulnerable to attacks.
A very important aspect in preventing passwords and personal information is to avoid typing them on public or shared computers. With this action, there is a huge risk that it will be compromised and used by malicious people. This happens in several ways, either through malicious programs or a screenshot of your login and password.
Whenever possible, use trusted devices to access accounts. In addition, it is necessary to have two-factor authentication enabled, keep the operating system and applications always up to date.
In conclusion, it is crucial to understand how secure passwords contribute to the prevention of cyber attacks and what measures are taken by users. Passwords are the first line of defense against hackers, so using a strong password prevents data from being stolen or compromised. With simple practices carried out by users, the guarantee of personal and financial information will be safe against increasingly dangerous and sophisticated threats.
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