The Anti-virus Times

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

This issue's material has been provided by Anti-virus Times project participant Irrepressible Inhabitant from Shakhty

Life was good when nobody needed passwords—nobody, that is, except for various clandestine organizations. They came up with a system of signs and countersigns, which was needed because network connections didn’t exist at the time and there was no other way of knowing whether the right person had shown up to a secret meeting.

With the development of computer technology—especially with the appearance of different forums, social networks, e-stores, mail services, and other places where a person who wants to take advantage of website services or a program must be identified—a password and login must be entered. Active Internet users may have several dozen passwords, but can they remember them all?

Sometimes you have to visit a website or make an online payment, and you realize that you’ve forgotten your password at the most inopportune moment…

We’ve arranged tips on how to easily create passwords that are convenient to input and easy to remember, eliminating password-related problems once and for all.

1. If you are registered on 50 websites and all of them require an access password, just imagine how long it will take you to remember these passwords and then later be able to recall the right one. To avoid problems of this kind, create only one password! You’ll have no trouble remembering just one.
2. If you want to make things a bit more complicated, divide all the websites you visit into three groups: work, private, and suspicious. Create passwords for each group—three passwords will be more than enough to protect your accounts!
3. Do not trust websites and programs that require you to change your password every 30/60/90 days. These are probably hackers prompting you to change your password so that they can steal your data! The password you choose must serve you forever!
4. The password may be of any length and consist of any symbols; however, programs exist that can crack any password, especially now that botnets are being used to develop distributed computing. That’s why users shouldn’t bother including any special symbols, different keyboard layouts, upper- or lowercase letters, or a combination of any of these in their passwords. The main thing is for you to be able to easily remember your passwords and type them in.
5. Your password must not contain any symbols that are missing from a mobile phone keyboard; this lets you create a password that will be convenient to enter from your mobile phone as well as from your PC keyboard. That’s why the best passwords are birthdays (yours, a relative’s, or a friend’s), your pet’s name, the model of your car or TV set, or your first or last name. Even easier to remember are the passwords “123456” and “qwerty.”
6. If you didn’t follow the first tip and decided to choose a complex password, you’ll have to follow a series of steps to remember the password (or several passwords, if you really decided to complicate the process).
   • Write down your password on a sticky note and affix it to your monitor.
   • Write your password on an extra piece of paper and put it under your keyboard.
   • In addition, write it down in all the notebooks you have (in case you misplace one of them).
   • You can also create a file containing all your passwords, put it on your desktop, and put a copy of it in your My Documents folder.
   • And, for security, give your closest friends your password for safekeeping.
7. And finally, another convenient thing to do: check the box next to “Remember this password” when you come across it on different websites, programs, and browsers, or if your PC prompts you to do this. Never reject this option! Why?
   • First, you won’t have to remember your password.
   • Second, if you enter your password frequently, this eliminates the problem of someone potentially peering over your shoulder.
   • Third, if you have to make an online banking payment or check your mailbox, and you’re away from your PC, you can ask anyone near your computer to handle this for you because the system already knows your password. This lets you go about your business, without having to give anyone your password.

Remember, your security depends on you….and also on your password ;)