How to create a strong and secure password to protect your money (and your data)
With scams and frauds that hack accounts and steal data (and money) increasingly common, it's important to have strong, secure passwords. Here are some tips for creating your own.
March 9, 2023
Redação N26
As social and work relationships have become more virtual and technological in recent years, scams have also become more sophisticated (as Pix scams). This means you need strong and secure passwords to protect your money and data.
The good news is that some good password practices already make your money and your information much safer. Take a look at how to create the best passwords for different websites, apps and services.
Why a password needs to be strong and secure
Have you ever thought about the possibility of having your account hacked? Scary, right? You take care of your money and, suddenly, suffer a blow that brings losses and headaches.
Having a strong and secure password is your first line of defense against this. Do you know why? One of the ways hackers try to access accounts is by testing passwords. And not one by one, like when you play a game of trying to guess a friend's password. But with tools that keep generating and testing possibilities until they get it right.
And that's why combinations of different characters are important to make your password secure.
What is a strong and secure password
A strong password is the best combination of assorted characters you can come up with. This means combining letters (upper and lower case), numbers and special characters to increase complexity.
For example, "SeNh@SegUr@121314" is a stronger password than "senhasegura" or simply "121314". But how to do this without forgetting everything?
How to create a strong and secure password
Here are some tips to make all your passwords strong and secure.
Don't go obvious
Never use obvious passwords like birthdays, phone numbers, family names, or easy to guess sequences of numbers. If someone discovers your personal information, they will try to guess your passwords from it.
Focus on things you like, but few people know about. Or in words that you always remember for no reason, but are not related to your life.
Creativity is everything
It is important to avoid using the same password for multiple accounts. If one of them is invaded, all the others are at risk.
Instead, if you want to make it easy, think of password variations that follow the same logic inside your head but aren't easy to guess from the outside. It can be changing the characters, changing parts of the password, etc.
Renew your passwords
Yes, it's boring. But it's really worth it to change all your passwords regularly. Most experts recommend changing every three months to ensure extra security.
Privacy always
Sometimes we need it, right? But as much as possible, avoid sharing your passwords with others - including friends and family.
If it's a password you need to share - a streaming service password, for example - make sure it's very different from the others you use. And also change it from time to time.
Complexity is key
A strong and secure password is always long. Keep an eye on the character limit of websites and apps and abuse it. Use uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and special characters all together. (Like our example, "SeNh@SegUr@121314".)
How to remember so many strong and secure passwords?
A lot of people are too lazy to invest in stronger passwords because they think they'll forget all of them. It can happen sometimes, but there are ways to prevent it.
There are password manager programs, such as apps that can be installed on your smartphone. Some operating systems already offer the option of creating strong passwords when you need to create one.
And there's still the good old notebook technique: having a notebook somewhere in the house with all your passwords written down. It might help.
