How do you create a strong password that cannot be guessed?

How do you create a strong password that cannot be guessed?

Privacy is the biggest concern of many people nowadays, especially with the great technical development and the expansion of means of communication, and the increasing number of digital accounts that any individual can create. Today, it is necessary to create a strong password to secure personal accounts, limit unauthorized access, and enhance the confidence of individuals in the safety of sharing their personal information without worrying or fear of being stolen.

Strongest passwords

• table of contents:

1. What does the term password mean?
2. The importance of creating a strong password
3. Evolution of the importance of creating a strong password
4. What are the risks to the safety and security of passwords?
5. Symbols that can be used in passwords
6. The importance of symbols in creating a strong password
7. Strategies for creating a strong password
8. Steps to create a strong password
9. How do you remember your password easily?
10. Some Frequently Asked Questions About Creating a Strong Password

What does the term password mean?

A password is defined as the set of characters and symbols that an individual puts in, in order to identify the people who are authorized to access their website or private accounts. In other words, the password represents the unique digital fingerprint of each person, which is supposed to be impenetrable, and out of the reach of unauthorized persons to access the information.

Why is it important to create a strong password?

Having a strong password helps secure all types of accounts, especially bank accounts and social media accounts. Today, securing personal accounts has become the first goal for many people, who seek to avoid being exposed to hacking attempts. Furthermore, securing the digital account with a strong password limits the access of unauthorized persons to the account, and thus the possibility of conducting relatively large transactions.

Evolution of the importance of creating a strong password

The Internet has recently transformed from a means of entertainment and luxury, to an essential means of communication, financial transactions, and transmission of highly important information. Which made various people search for certain means and strategies to help them secure their accounts, and avoid attempts to hack their password as much as possible.

Unlike in the past, most people's passwords were simple and easy to guess. For example, the password for nuclear missile launches from the US arsenal for two decades was eight zeros (00000000). Which shows how little attention was paid to passwords and their strength in the past, due to the few hacking attempts and the simplicity of technology at the time, but it is completely different today.

Many websites require passwords that are strong and difficult to guess, in order to protect their accounts from hacking and theft. However, despite the importance of privacy in our world today, there are many ways of hacking and stealing information, it was found in a study for the year 2020 that the most used passwords in the world are:

• 123456
• 123456789
• picture1
• password
• .12345678
• 111111

This reflects the seriousness of the situation, which is represented by the lack of interest of individuals in securing their accounts and protecting them from hacking, due to the lack of awareness about the importance of creating a strong password that secures the account and protects it from loss.

What are the risks to the safety and security of passwords?

One of the most important risks to passwords, which push individuals to work to secure their accounts, is exposure to hacking attempts and personal data theft. Many websites today require the individual to provide his personal data and sensitive information, such as his bank account number, date of birth, and even his mobile phone number.

In recent years, major companies have been subjected to major hacking attempts that included thousands of accounts, which led to the leakage of personal data to unauthorized parties, which led to the theft of a lot of information, and the theft of digital bank accounts. For example, in 2018, Facebook, Amazon and eBay were subjected to a hack, which led to the leakage of millions of sensitive personal information of many of its users, as about 26 million accounts had their private data leaked.

Which led to it falling into the hands of hackers, who worked to sell the personal data of individuals and their bank accounts via the Dark Web to people who were not authorized to own it in the first place. This requires taking additional measures, and constantly working on creating a strong password every now and then. With the aim of securing personal accounts from any hacking attempt, and thwarting any hacking process that has already taken place.

In short, today the risks of exposure to theft and hacking are among the major risks and challenges facing individuals, especially independent online entrepreneurs. It shares with others that it considers the most important challenges that they may face.

Symbols that can be used in passwords

The process of creating a strong password requires following a number of steps and avoiding others, in order to ensure that a strong password is created, capable of thwarting any attempt to hack or steal data.

First: the things to avoid

• 1. Names of family members

Some hacking operations are carried out by individuals directly related to the account holder, therefore it is important to stay away from the names of acquaintances and family members.

• 2. Mobile phone numbers

An account may be hacked by various means, for example: his social networking account on Facebook was hacked, and the hacker accessed the mobile phone number of the individual. What threatens the rest of his personal and bank accounts in particular, as many hackers try to access the least protected accounts to steal personal information, and guess the passwords of the most important accounts.

• 3. Use phrases or words by themselves

The biggest danger to passwords is the hacker's ability to guess the words that people have used, which are usually easy-to-guess words, such as the most popular word in the world, password. Before carrying out their attacks, some hackers monitor the actions and trends of the victim, in order to guess the words that the individual may use to secure his account.

• 4. Pet names that are easy to guess

Similar to the names of family members, pet names are among the first words that hackers try to guess, and thus are a poor choice as strong passwords.

• 5. Personal information and general use words

As with cell phone numbers, hackers' access to any personal information may threaten all accounts owned by an individual. Therefore, it is better to stay away from any personal information that may be stolen, in order to avoid any hacking attempt that may affect the rest of the accounts of individuals.

Second: Things to pay attention to include in passwords

• 1. Emoticons for currencies

Symbols such as the US dollar symbol $ and others are one of the best means of securing passwords, due to their large number and the difficulty of guessing which symbol may be used to create a strong password for it.

• 2. Use lowercase and uppercase letters in the password

In contrast to the Arabic language, computer algorithms view uppercase and lowercase characters, such as (uppercase/lowercase), as completely different letters. Which means the wide range of characters that an individual can use. For example, although hHHhhhhhhh is simple, it is a difficult word to guess easily.

• 3. The word must be long, including at least 12 letters and symbols

One of the most important ways to protect accounts is to use long passwords, as it takes at least five days to guess a password consisting of 9 characters to be hacked. While 10 character words take 4 months , 11 character words take at least 20 years.

If it comes to choosing passwords of at least 12 characters, it would take hackers nearly 200 years to guess them. Which means more protection.

• 4. Words that are difficult to recognize or read easily

This is obvious, as everything that can be expected can be hacked, and the more difficult it is to find out the password, the more difficult it is to crack it.

How important are symbols in creating a strong password?

Tokens are one of the most important means of creating a strong password, primarily due to the difficulty of guessing which characters the user used in their password. In addition to the above, the tokens provide maximum protection, even if the individual does not secure his password, with all that he must adhere to while creating a strong password.

For example, an individual might choose a simple word as the password for their own accounts such as password, which is one of the most commonly used passwords, but when one of the unique characters and symbols is included, it helps a lot in protecting the word from being hacked. For example, %%password$# is a difficult word to guess.

There is no specific mechanism to guess and know the nature of the codes that the individual used in his password, in addition to the presence of dozens of codes that can be chosen from simply.

Strong password generation strategies

Success in building a strong password to protect and ensure the security of accounts is related to following a number of strategies, which will ensure as much as possible that the individual has created a password capable of protecting his personal accounts.

1. Reservation of used passwords

One of the most important strategies for creating a strong password is to refrain from sharing any clue that might point to the word, or even sharing the word itself with anyone who is not authorized to access the account. Most of the statistics indicate that most of the hacking operations carried out by individuals with personal knowledge of the victims, they had obtained hints about passwords, or accessed them by sharing their owners with them.

2. Do not use one password for all accounts

One of the very important factors in securing personal accounts is to avoid using the same word, no matter how strong and difficult it is to guess for all accounts. Instead of an individual being hacked, the site hosting the individual's account may be completely hacked, resulting in the individual's personal information and password being leaked.

3. Use hard-to-guess words

The use of words away from personal information is one of the strengths of the passwords used, the more difficult the word is to guess, the stronger the word and more resistant to hacking. You are able to choose difficult-to-guess words, if you steer clear of choosing words related to personal information, phone numbers or the names of friends. Most important of all, use symbols and uppercase and lowercase letters to create the password.

4. Keep the password logical so as not to be forgotten, but long

While it is important to choose hard-to-guess words, it is impractical to choose hard-to-remember words. The individual must choose a word that fulfills the conditions of strength in protecting his accounts, but at the same time be able to remember it easily, provided that it consists of at least 12 characters.

Ease of remembering and avoiding mistakes is a feature of strong passwords suitable for protecting accounts, as many sites allow only a limited number of attempts to enter passwords. Which means that choosing a very difficult word that is impossible to remember, an individual's account may be subject to disablement or deletion by the site administration, to protect the account's content from leakage and theft. This is because it suspects attempts to hack the account, and thus tries to combat it before it happens.

Each of the following can be used to create a strong password that is easy to remember and that meets the length conditions:

• A random snippet of one's favorite song.
• A group of words that have a special meaning to an individual, but take care not to make them easy to guess.
• A quote from a book or a saying.
• Mathematical number series. For example, the Fibonacci sequence (...1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21 ).
• Delete some letters from the sentences. For example, taking the first letters of a sentence.

Steps to create a strong password

No two disagree that there is no specific pattern or series for creating passwords, as passwords mainly relate to the style, nature, and personality of the individual coming into the process. But no matter how different the steps are, they all agree in the basics:

1. Create a list of words to avoid

Pre-visiting the words and symbols that should be avoided while planning to create a strong password that ensures the security of personal accounts, helps in knowing the most appropriate direction that an individual should take when devising the appropriate word.

2. Choose the appropriate icons

There are dozens of symbols that can be used in the process of creating a strong password, but it is best to choose the ones that are closest to one's mind. For example, if a person intends to secure a bank account, they can use symbols for currencies.

In addition to the above, the symbols help to separate the password segments, because spaces are not allowed to write and create the password. If a person wants to keep a single word for most of their accounts, but without the risk of becoming a victim of hacking, they can add a symbol after the keyword, and add words related to the site where the word is originated.

For example, creating a password for a Facebook social networking account, if a person wants his word to be (Hhfw123), he can add a symbol and an abbreviation that expresses the communication site (Hhfw123@FB), thus reducing the chances of confusing and forgetting words.

3. Determine the most appropriate word length

As mentioned earlier, choosing long passwords that exceed 12 characters contributes greatly to their security and protection from hacking. But some people prefer to choose relatively short passwords, and therefore they are forced to strengthen the password with many different symbols and characters, in order to protect the account, and reduce the chances of successful hacking operations.

4. Test the strength of the chosen password

Many sites provide, during registration, a scale that provides a reading of the strength of the word used, in order to educate the user and warn him of the need to modify the word, if it is weak or medium strength. In addition to the above, there are sites that specialize in giving users the ability to know the strength of each of their passwords, including HowSecureIsMyPassword .

How do you remember your password easily?

It is very important to choose a password that one can recall and remember whenever he wants, as the word is less protected, no matter how long and full of symbols, if the individual needs to write it down on a piece of paper. Where you will become vulnerable to physical theft. But with the increasing importance of securing accounts and protecting them from hacking and theft, the need for more complex and more difficult words has become more necessary than before.

Today, many sites provide the capabilities of keeping passwords for all personal accounts in a secured wallet, and all that an individual needs is to choose and remember one word to be able to access all the words related to all his accounts, whether they are banking or social media accounts.

One of these sites is 1password , which in turn charges a certain fee in order to protect and secure the passwords of its users. Moreover, following the strategies in the process of creating a strong password, is sufficient to some extent to secure the ability of an individual to have access to a strong password that is easy to remember, but difficult to hack and guess by unauthorized persons.

Some Frequently Asked Questions About Creating a Strong Password

Because building and creating a strong password is so important, users have a number of common questions that come to mind, including:

First: What are the alternatives to creating a strong password?

Many sites and software today offer many alternatives to using passwords, as an individual can use a normal or medium-strength password, in addition to some additional means, to secure his accounts effectively. Among the most important ways:

• 1. 2-step login confirmation

Two Steps Authentication, or Two Steps Authentication, is defined as the process that requires the user to enter a specific code that is sent to their mobile phone each time they log in. This method is one of the most secure means in securing and protecting passwords, as it requires registering your mobile phone number on the site, and preventing any logins unless you confirm the process via your mobile phone.

Many websites and social media programs today offer this method, as an additional means to ensure the security and protection of social media accounts and bank accounts. For example, the social networking program WhatsApp, Facebook and Telegram.

• 2. Use biometrics to log in

Users can also associate biometrics, such as a fingerprint or facial capture features, or voice commands, in their account logins to conduct business and financial transactions. For example, iPhone users can limit downloading any software or purchasing any product, unless they confirm the process using biometrics such as a fingerprint or face lock.

• 3. Link email with password

Although this method does not actually eliminate the need to use and create a strong password, it is an ideal way to monitor and track any login to personal accounts and websites. By receiving an email, it contains the details of the login process, such as the time, geographical location, and the type of device that was used to perform the operation.

Thus, you can identify and limit unauthorized logins by telling the site that this process is not authorized, in addition to changing the password.

Second: What if I forgot my password?

Many people are exposed to cases in which they forget the password, or make several mistakes of confusing the multiple passwords they have for their accounts, but it is not a cause for concern, as many sites contain a simple mechanism that helps the individual reset his password, after he Make sure that this account whose password you intend to reset is their personal account and not someone trying to hack it.

Third: Why does the site ask me to pass a CAPTCHA every time I try to log in?

Thanks to the techniques of artificial intelligence and the great technological development, most of the hacking operations are carried out using super-intelligent computers instead of performing individual attacks. Therefore, many sites see CAPTCHA as an effective test in detecting any automated attempts to log into the account, thus limiting them and restricting the login to humans.

In conclusion, creating a strong password is one of the main factors that ensure the success of protecting and securing anyone's communication and bank accounts, despite many discussions about the feasibility of continuing to use passwords to authenticate logins. In addition to devising alternative means, such as the use of biometrics and two-step login confirmation, passwords are still the most common means of protecting and securing different types of accounts, so it is very important to choose and create a strong password, capable of providing maximum protection, and to give The individual has the ability to avoid being a victim of cyber attacks.