How Quickly Can Your Passwords be Cracked?

How Quickly Can Your Passwords be Cracked?

My dad’s visiting and we’re talking about passwords. How secure are you online? Your credit cards? Your bank accounts? On-line security is a very serious thing and it’s pretty simple to make sure you’re safe.

Your passwords MUST BE SECURE! You might think they are, however…

Do you use:
1. Your partner, child, or pet’s name, possibly followed by a 0 or 1 (because they’re always making you use a number, aren’t they?)
2. The last 4 digits of your social security number
3. 123 or 1234 or 123456
4. password
5. Your city, or college, football team name
6. Date of birth – yours, your partner’s or your child’s
7. god
8. letmein
9. money
10. love

According to John Pozadzides, that covers about 20% of us. And, if you’re not in that list, it will take him a few more minutes to break in.

This is amazing —

  • If your password is 5 characters long, all in lower case, it takes 11.9 seconds to crack.
  • If your password is 8 characters long, using a mix of all characters on the keyboard (uppercase, lowercase, and special characters – like @#$%^&*), it will take 2.1 centuries to crack!

John wrote one of the best posts on passwords I’ve read. It’s frightening, informative, educational and, therefore, empowering! Take a few minutes to read “How I’d Hack Your Weak Passwords” and learn how you can make your passwords secure.

I recommend a wonderful password program, 1Password. Check them out. Easy to use; they create killer passwords for you; more than worth the money. Don’t wait until it’s too late.

How secure are your passwords?

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