How to keep your passwords safe online

Uswitch.com conducted a consumer survey to find out how the UK chooses their passwords, how safe they are and how often they have been hacked. 

Survey highlights include that 30% of people use their birth year and 39% use a pets name as part of their password. This highlights the importance of keeping this type of information secure and safe, and avoiding anything that asks for these details to be shared, including quizzes on social media. The most secure way is to avoid any personal identifying information in passwords all together as this could be the first thing hackers try. 

Password don’ts:

• Don’t write your password down. Not on paper, not in an email, not anywhere!
• Don’t reuse passwords across accounts.
• Avoid using loved ones’ names.
• Avoid using memorable keyboard paths. Example: 123456, qwerty.
• Don’t tell anyone your password.

Password dos:

• Use 2FA
• Use a password manager
• Make it as long as you can and use lowercase, uppercase, numbers, and symbols in every password.