Password deemed safe

What is a safe password?

Everyone knows, spam is a scourge on the internet. But where do they come from most of the time? It is very simple; they are sent unbeknownst to email account owners who have password deficiencies. A password that is too simple can be found quite easily. Thus, the hackers take advantage of it to use the vulnerable e-mail accounts and thus send millions of spam mails before their owners realize it.

How to secure my access?

Here are the main lines to follow in order to secure email accounts and reduce the risk of usurpation.

A secure password must contain all of the following:

• The minimum length of the password must be 8 characters. (more, it’s better)
• at least one digit. (123456789)
• at least one capital letter. (A B C D E F…)
• at least one lowercase letter . (a b c d e f…)
• different from the name and domain.

Ideally, your password should also contain a symbol. (!”$%&*…)

Once you have chosen your password, you can check the strength on the following website :
https://howsecureismypassword.net/

Tip: You should always avoid choosing a password that contains the following strings : 123, qwerty, qazwsx, 987, bonjour, allo, (votre prénom), info, admin.

Time for some exemple.

Keep in mind that the longer your password, the safer it is. With some exceptions. For example, although “123456789987” is long, it’s way too simple. It would only take 25 seconds to find it with the tools available nowadays. You will probably say that the longer the password, the more difficult it will be for you to remember it? Not quite.

• ILoveMy2DogsMoreThanAnything! (Time required to hack: 4 UNDECILLION YEARS)
• HEREisAgoodPA$$W0RD (Time required to hack: 552 QUADRILLION YEARS)
• Thepizzaisgoodto2 (Time required to hack: 2 TRILLION YEARS)
• C@$hew!P3anuts (Time required to hack: 204 MILLION YEARS)

These are just examples but admit that it’s still pretty easy to remember, right?

For your information, «undecillion years is 10 exposed in 36.
In other words: 10 times 10 times 10 times 10… 36 times like that.
If this password « ILoveMy2DogsMoreThanAnything! » Is one day found … it’s that you really have, but really no luck!

In conclusion

Hoping that these little tips can help you and avoid that your email accounts, hosting accounts or even your utility accounts is the target of hackers in the future.

Feel free to leave comments if you find this article useful or not.

NOTE: In a constant effort and to contribute to overall Internet security, Astral Internet has asked all mailbox users who have password strength gaps to be updated by April 2, 2019. A first communication was sent on Thursday morning, February 21, 2019. A second will be sent on Tuesday, March 19 and a final notice will be sent Monday, April 1, 2019.