Password Security Tips - World Password Day

[TheresaV]

Hi everyone,

Another day, another cause! Today is official Password Day and whilst that might not sound very exciting, we wanted to take the opportunity to talk a bit about password safety and how certain features can help you increase yours. After all, it’s better to be safe than sorry! 

Create your secure passwords following the below best practices:

• Your password should be 16 characters or more (currently over half of the passwords are eight characters or less, which are not as strong as longer passwords).
• Your password should include a combination of letters, numbers, and characters.
• Your password shouldn’t be shared with any of your other accounts or website login.
• Your password shouldn’t include any personal information such as your address or phone number. It’s also best not to include any information that can be accessed over social media like kids’ names or birthdays.
• You password shouldn’t contain any consecutive letters or numbers.
• Your password shouldn’t be the word “password” or the same letter or number repeated.

While that might sound a bit excessive, it’s what gives you the security and comfort to use your devices and accounts without the fear of them being accessed by someone else. If you already have your password set, there are multiple ways to check how secure it is such as on websites like security.org. If you struggle to generate a secure password, you can either use a password generator that helps match all of the above criteria (for example here) or use an app that securely generates and stores your passwords, such as LastPass or 1Password.

Do you have any tips on how to create a strong password? Or do you use any other apps that help you store all of your passwords securely? 🔒

[Anonymous]

Interesting about 16+ when most sites (including O2) only want 8 including a number & (some) more recently a special character.

[pgn]

The upper-case letter usually throws me... 😖

Hit one the other day that did not work if you fed it 12 characters, so ...

• E@zy2Remember

was out for starters 😆

[madasaf1sh]

This always makes me laugh..

From a Professional POV passwords are a nightmare and 16+ character passwords are just going to lead to people writing them down on stick it notes under keyboards.

Instead of pushing for longer more complex passwords we should be pushing for more and more companies such as o2 to use Multifactor Authentication such as Google Authenticator and MS Authenticator apps on mobile devices and even hardware tokens such as Yubi Keys. None of these require any data connection..

SMS is not good for MFA. and should be removed from Financial institutions or anywhere that has financial data on you... as it isnt secure.

I use both LastPass (mind you they have had a few security vulnerabilities) and DashLane.

Also people should be used to NOT using the same password for email as they do for any of their accounts.

A Good article from Microsoft about passwords https://news.microsoft.com/en-gb/features/lets-face-it-we-have-to-stop-using-passwords/

The perfect password length 40 Characters lol - This is none of my passwords btw

SSggnNrsddYAhYBJnc7&SDjhnJzSgayh5Yq!M7n#

edited to add more detail

[Jenny105]

This is not my password but I ike codes and tags eg

my grt aunts birthday was  30. 07. 1910.    Her initials RM    take a tag from the website (o2 is rubbish for this) so take AMAZON  as AMA  .   first letter of the web site then the year 2021 =21

And you might get something like this

Amazon

aMa30.07Rm21&A1910

Facebook

fAc30.07Rm21&F1910

Google

gOo30.07Rm21&G1910

Would that be safe enough ?  Its memorable after a few gos  and can be different for every site

[Anonymous]

I'm not so sure telling people to check their password is secure by putting it into password checking websites is really such a good idea!

[Bambino]

[jonsie]

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@madasaf1sh wrote:

SSggnNrsddYAhYBJnc7&SDjhnJzSgayh5Yq!M7n#

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How'd ya know my password?

[Anonymous]

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@Jenny105 wrote:

This is not my password but I ike codes and tags eg

my grt aunts birthday was  30. 07. 1910.    Her initials RM    take a tag from the website (o2 is rubbish for this) so take AMAZON  as AMA  .   first letter of the web site then the year 2021 =21

And you might get something like this

Amazon

aMa30.07Rm21&A1910

Facebook

fAc30.07Rm21&F1910

Google

gOo30.07Rm21&G1910

Would that be safe enough ?  Its memorable after a few gos  and can be different for every site

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Really?

[Anonymous]

@Anonymous Keep up man