Password Day: How to Protect Your Password - Dispatch Weekly

Today (May 3 2018) is Password Day. They are everywhere nowadays and they should be more considered according to their power. They are the key for you to access every account that you have on the internet where you need to register (Email, Social Media…).

Password Day’s history

Passwords are here since people want to protect and hide something from others. Passwords existed a long time before the Internet was created, especially in espionage or secret societies were people used passwords to recognise themselves. They became more vulnerable with its development because digital security is absolutely vital for the protection of our data and private life from other people, companies or hackers. Especially with the lack of personal privacy and all the data scandals, passwords are your best friends so use them intelligently.

The Password Day is an initiative to spread better password habits among the billions of internet users. The annual event takes place every first Thursday in May. The Password Day is a really big event that gathers more than 170 organisations and companies like Dell, Microsoft or Toshiba.

Hackers tricks to steal passwords

The Brute Force attack – this is the most spread tricks to force a password and break into an account or software. This scam consists of checking all possible combinations until the algorithm finds the right one. As the algorithms are becoming more and more powerful, the minimum thing to do to protect yourself is to set a relatively long password.

One of the other security breaches that can be exploited by hackers is the human himself. Indeed, hackers can use all the information that they can find on you on the internet (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn…) to find your password. They can also trick you and steal identities of people that you know to push you to reveal some private information like passwords or bank account details.

Finally, one of the basic but not least techniques is the Phishing. This trick is well known and now people are mostly used to it but some are still getting scammed. Basically, the hackers send an email to the victim by faking a legitimate identity (Gmail address or Facebook account for instance) and requesting to log in to the service so they can then collect the username and password.

What could you do to protect yourself?

Well, it is Password Day so why not change yours? Interestingly, one of the best securities for your passwords is to change them regularly. A study made by Avast Software shows that 47% of the British population have either never changed the password of their email address, or have done it only because they had forgotten it

Change passwords between your different accounts. This is a basic knowledge but it’s also very important. If you have the same password for all your account a hacker could steal all your personal details without being forced to crack multiple passwords. It’s called the domino effect and you must avoid it to protect yourself.

Finally, one of the other mistakes that a lot of people do is to write their passwords in a notepad file. This is not advisable because all that the hackers have to do is to break into your computer through malware or virus and then find all the passwords in this notepad.