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It’s World Password Day, when we’re supposed to update our passwords and make sure they’re secure.
The most common in the U.S. last year were: “123456” . . . “password” . . . “admin” . . . “1234” . . . and “unknown”. So, none of those are secure.
A company called Hive Systems puts out a graphic each year that shows how long it would take hackers to crack your password depending on how long and complex it is.
Basic passwords that are just numbers can be cracked instantly now.
Even a nine-digit number would only take them six minutes. But things get a lot more secure as soon as you mix in upper and lowercase letters. And special symbols like exclamation points help a lot.
If you add all of those things along with numbers, a nine-character password would take at least 479 YEARS to crack.
Or if you really want to be safe, make it 18 characters and they’d have to keep at it for 19 QUINTILLION years. That’s 19, followed by 18 zeroes.
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