It is not always easy to choose a password. Is it secure enough? Will you forget it after three days? How to fix it? Today we give you five tips to find the right combination.
Have you recently been hacked or are you worried about being hacked? The password is often the first barrier of protection to establish. But for it to be effective, it is still necessary to respect some golden rules (and remember them).
To begin with, you will not actually need to choose just one password, but several. Ideally, it should be different for each site or platform you subscribe to. The goal is to protect your accounts in case of hacking: if one of them is compromised and you have chosen a unique password, the others will be more likely to be compromised as well.
Your passwords should be long AND complex. A minimum of 12 signs are recommended. In these 12 signs, you should include: uppercase, lowercase, numbers and finally, special characters.
The latest NIST report, considered a reference on the subject, warns sites not to force users to choose complex passwords. At issue: the phenomenon of “false complexity”. Most users would switch from “password” to “password-1” or “password-2”. No one will have a hard time thwarting this illusion of security.
The same applies if you just write “P4ssw0rd”: this combination is so common, that it is not considered complex. If you want a really secure password, you will have to redouble your imagination.
In addition, complexity can lead you to want to always use the same password, to remember it. This would also be counterproductive.
It is also important that the content is not easy to guess, by a stranger through information published on social networks, or by malicious acquaintances. So we avoid: the name of his cat, his favorite music group whose concerts we post on Facebook several times a week, the name or date of birth of his child, etc.
In the same way, forget about simple logical sequences like 123456, azerty, abcdef, etc. The Nordpass password manager has compiled a list of the 10 most used combinations. There is this type of suite or the term “password”… They are to be banned at all costs, because they are too simple to guess.
To easily remember a complex password, you can use mnemonic means (be careful, this stings a little eyes):
For example, “Since 2020, I use Qwant every day” becomes “D2020,j’Qtlj”
“Qwant is a great search system” becomes “QwantC1supR6tem2recherche”
“I love Qwant and the sun” becomes: “I @d0r3Qw@nt&le$0l3il”.
You can never remember your passwords, despite these methods? Do not write them on a post-it: there are password managers dedicated to this purpose.
Many sites or applications, such as email managers and social networks, offer two-factor authentication services. Once you have entered your password, an activation message or a temporary code will be sent to you, most of the time either by email or SMS. You must pass these two security steps to log in to your account.
Now that you know everything, all you have to do is choose your passwords!
