Password Security
05/24/2007With the ever present and overgrowing threat of identity theft, our web design/web development company has been swarmed with questions regarding the security of on line purchasing. In this era of on line dating profiles, billion-dollar on line scams and world-culture, one can never be too careful with his or her on line information. In a day and age when even a refrigerator requires a password, there are a million different things to remember. Which begs the question: How does an ecommerce company combine ease of use with Alcatraz-like security?
Here are a few things to keep in mind, whether you are an ecommerce business, a developer or a customer…
1 When creating a User name and password, the more diversity, the better. A user name/password should contain capital and small letters, should be easy for you to remember, and should always be case sensitive. It has been popular recently to waive the case sensitivity in order to make a user name easier to remember, however, keeping it sensitive more than doubles the possible user names that could be used, and also makes the possibility of someone guessing the user name/password that much more unlikely.
2 Symbols are your friend. especially in passwords, symbols are one way to make it practically impossible for someone to guess your password. If, for instance, You want to use the word Bass as your password. This is a good password in that it contains a capital letter and small letters. Unfortunately, Bass is an English word, which makes it a poor password because it is easier to guess. If, instead, I were to use B@$$, which looks like Bass To the user, but is far more complicated because of the use of symbols, I would be much safer from hackers.
3 Randomness: It’s not just for serial killers anymore Using a random combination of letters is a lot more secure than using an actual word. Even a long word, like endometriosis or pulchritudinous are still not secure enough when it comes to credit card information and social security numbers, so if you have to pick something relative to your life, make it a combination of different things. For instance, use the first letters of the first names of all your direct family members and then someone’s birth year followed by an exclamation point. Meaning this:
4 My mothers name starts with a T, my dad is a T and my sister is an M. So my password might be tTm1952! which makes it easier for me to remember and harder for hackers.
All in all, your information can be as secure as you want, quickly and easily. While hacking does sometimes happen, regardless of the steps that are taken, following these simple steps will put you at the bottom of the Internet identity theft list. And of course, this would not be a security article without this perfunctory message: Never share your user name or password with anyone.
