Larilyn's Tip of the Week: New Year, New Password

At the risk of sounding like a broken record (you know, those vinyl things that were popular last CENTURY, were forgotten about for a long period of time, and now are suddenly becoming trendy again?).....we're talking passwords again.  Even though I did a blog on passwords earlier this year, I'm here again because it's a very important topic!

We just entered a brand new year.  2024 is bright, shiny, and full of brand-new possibilities!

Including the possibility that if you haven't changed your password in a while, a hacker may be able to figure it out and sign into every account you own (because let's not lie, I know most of you use the same password for EVERYTHING).  

So, amongst all of your New Year's resolutions, my suggestion for you is this:  it's time to change your password.  

And please stay away from the common passwords:

Make it unique.  Include letters, numbers, symbols - all the good things.  Mis-spell a word intentionally.  For example, spell trees with a "w" instead of an "r":  twees.  You'll remember it, but it makes it harder for it to be guessed.  

Consider using a combination of words that have no connection between them.  For example, using a password like car4wheels would be bad.  Cars have wheels.  They are easily tied to one another.  BUT, if you look around you and find two random things that have no connection and come up with mug7spaceship - tying a mug to a spaceship is a far reach!  And you can go further to make it harder to guess.  Maybe spell mug with two g's, or spaceship can be spacechip.  Whatever you do, make it easy to remember for you, but hard to guess for someone else.

Once you have your password, don't share it, Ddon't write it down.  Consider using a password manager if you have trouble remembering different passwords for different sites (and if you need a recommendation for a good password manager - please talk to us!).

And make sure that when you change it in one place, you change it everywhere - to different passwords!  And I don't mean that at your bank, you use twees1 but for your email, you use twees2.  What I mean is that you should have a unique password for every site that you frequent.  Especially those which you would like to be more secure - financial accounts, social media, etc.

Let's start 2024 out right!