Our digital lives revolve around personal accounts that we create and maintain to continue accessing certain services. The Google account for email, the Netflix account to take advantage of the subscription we pay, the Amazon account for our purchases… and many others where we are always in demand use strong passwords.
Traditionally I use quite vague passwords, probably the typical ones that we all use, at least I think after looking at the list of the most used passwords in Europe. A few years ago I started to become aware of my digital security, now I radically changed my strategy. The result: I have never been hacked and my accounts have not been stolen.
The starting point: forgetting dates, names and meaningful phrases
Yeah, remembering password can be a difficult task, that is why it is common to choose keys with elements that allow us to memorize them. However, “123456789”, your name or your date of birth are not eligible passwords for accounts where we store personal information.
Much less for services with sensitive data such as bank accounts or credit cards. That’s the first thing that popped into my head: an easy-to-remember password implies insecurity. So it was from there that I began to nip in the bud all the ideas relating to it.
By paying attention to cybersecurity news, and especially passwords, I’ve learned that a meaningless mix of letters, symbols, upper and lower case letters, and numbers is the best option. However… How do you remember something like that? The answer is: a password manager. An alternative that I use to remember my passwords on my mobile. Then I will develop this point a little more because it has a few “asterisks”.
Passwords from your mobile with emojis
This may seem strange to you, it may even seem unfounded, but no: using emojis in passwords is possible – not in all services – and not only can it be done, but it’s very safe to prevent malicious users from accessing it.
Plus, since the keyboards available on Android and iOS have sections dedicated to them, it’s a really simple task. On a computer it is also possible, and yes, I use the popular emoticons: this time, not to send a kiss or congratulate on the birthday but to protect my accounts
The more than 3,600 emojis in the Unicode standard give us endless possibilities. Especially because I use them to form meaningful sentences, which you shouldn’t do with ordinary characters. If you still don’t dare, I’ll give you a comparison that will leave you without arguments: five emoj is are equivalent to nine characters when it comes to obtaining passwords by brute force.
Periodic renewal
Key complexity is as important as it is renew periodically. It is not necessary that you change them every day, you would need more, but in my case I choose to do it every two or three months. Yes, it takes up some of my free time but in return I have no worries for my safety.
In the same way, I usually pay close attention to emails. We usually get one every time they try to access our account and it’s the best sign that a change is coming. I repeat, changing them is strictly necessary if you pay enough attention to it.
For the services I use the least, I give carte blanche to password managers
I’ve mentioned this before, although it’s worth expanding on this aspect a little more: password managers are perfect for minds that manage to retain less information. This is my case, I admit, I use Google’s password manager and sometimes I change it to LastPass.
This, yes, I don’t do it with all accounts, I only allow it to generate keys (and save) for the ones I use the least. The ones I access most frequently, like social networks or banking applications, I memorize (remember that memorizing emojis is easier if you know how to combine the right combinations). It should be taken into account that these services are not foolproof and may be subject to data extraction. Therefore, I only trust them with minor accounts.
So far I haven’t suffered any hacks, and although they have sometimes managed to “crack” my passwords, the two-factor authentication This gave me time to change it quickly. It is very important to activate it in all services that have it, currently the vast majority.
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