Which password to come up with. What password can you come up with for your accounts? Why you need to use complex passwords

Let's say a hacker found out the password for your main email. Here's what it can do:

1. Change your passwords for all social networks. Ask all your friends for money on your behalf.
2. Change your password for iCloud or Google Play. Next, steal your money or block your smartphone.
3. Study your correspondence, from which the hacker will probably extract your passport data and card number. He can easily get your mother’s maiden name from social networks.
4. Knowing your passport details and card number, the hacker will change your online banking password, change your contact phone number and be able to freely manage all your money.
5. If a hacker gets a scan of your passport in the mail, he will be able to take out a loan in your name from an unscrupulous credit organization and debt collectors will come to you.

Ilya Anonymous

Tinkoff Bank employee

Unreliable: words and sequences of numbers

• simple vocabulary words: sexy, love, hello, password;
• sequence of numbers in a row: 1234, 123456789, 9876543210;
• date of birth: 21041988, 2104;
• any year: 2015, 2010, 1988;
• your name: ilya;
• names of their relatives and pets: mama, papa, murka, stepka;
• name of the service you are registering on: mailru.

Reliable: numbers, letters, punctuation marks

• xJ462&b-vr01.8^5h;
• hs#lzkAc~6oifL0xwT;
• (|%SJbB7AN~T.

Good passwords are created by cats when they walk on the keyboard:

• s7777,.LW/g000---5255;
• GBz.vURHDG>923ub4grz.34;
• #$:*(Tg;9729htgbz1114.

If you just throw your hands on the keyboard a few times, you will get a strong password:

• p$(ghPHg5g79;
• 4ghu;DSsl@vnQwi4;
• vd.Kjbk.j4uies$.

Such passwords cannot be guessed using a dictionary, and searching through them will take months and years - during this time you will have time to change your password, mailbox and citizenship.

How to create and remember a strong password

Each person has their own technique for remembering a password. If you don't have one, try this:

1. Take a simple phrase that you will definitely remember. For example, “potatoes with mushrooms.” Write it: kartoshka s gribami.
2. Imagine saying this phrase with an accent. How would you write it then? For example, with an Italian accent: kartOshka s gribammi.
3. Replace the spaces with some symbol: a dash, a period, a comma, or something worse: kartOshka.s.gribammi.
4. Replace some letters with numbers - but in such a way that you remember what you changed. For example, a by @, i by 1: k@ [email protected]@mm1.

A password is best remembered when you enter it frequently. If you just created a password, turn off the “remember me” checkbox in your email or social networks, and you will have to enter it every day. This way your hands will learn to enter it automatically. After a week, you can turn on “Remember Me” again.

Strong Password: Alternative Method

A couple of months ago, I already talked about a method to come up with a strong password.

1. Take the words of your favorite song. For example, “This is not a joke, we met in minibus number one, we drive and remain silent.”
2. We take the first letters: enshmvvmpn1eim.
3. Translate into English layout: enshmvvmpn1eim.
4. We capitalize the first letters of stressed words: EnSHmvvMpn1eiM.
5. Add your favorite emoticon and the age at which you had first sex: EnSHmvvMpn1eiMX-D29.
6. It turned out to be 19 characters - it will easily fit into the password for Tinkoff Bank.

How to record passwords

Security experts do not recommend writing down passwords in open form, even if you keep them in a safe. If you must write down your password, do so in a way that only you know how to read it.

Take an old diary, open it somewhere in the middle or towards the end and write in the margins with a pencil “Potatoes with mushrooms. Italian style, by mail, 1 serving.” This note will help you remember how you changed the original phrase, and it will be unclear to strangers how to get your password from it.

Never keep passwords on sticky notes on your monitor. Don't carry them in your wallet. Don't write in notes on your phone.

How not to reveal your password

Even with a strong password, you can be hacked: for example, if someone spied you entering your password; if the computer from which you access your mail has spyware. How to protect yourself from such cases:

1. Do not use the same password in mail, banking, social networks and instant messengers. Change at least a third of the password so that it is difficult to guess.
2. Enable two-factor authentication wherever possible. Then, even if your password falls into the hands of fraudsters, they will also need your phone number to log into your mail or bank.
3. Try not to enter passwords on other people's computers, especially if the computer is shared: in an Internet cafe or library. You don't know what spyware they might have.
4. Password protect your home wireless network.
5. If you suspect that your password may have been leaked to attackers, change it in a secure environment and from a secure device. For example, at home from a tablet.
6. Keep your phone with you, and if your SIM card suddenly stops working, urgently call the operator and change your SIM card at a communication store. A non-working SIM card may mean that someone made a duplicate.

The VK social network has an excellent security system that protects users from guessing passwords for their pages, even if attackers find out logins from other people’s accounts. In most cases, when an account is “hijacked,” the user is to blame, and one of the reasons for this is the simplest password.

What does the simplest password mean? This is a lightweight password that usually consists of just a few numbers or letters. Here are examples of simple passwords:

• zxcvbn

• iphone

• 88888888

• password

• andrei

These are just a few examples, but you get the idea and that's the main thing. The more complex, and therefore more secure, the password, the lower the likelihood that the account will be opened by intruders.

How to come up with a complex password for VKontakte?

There are several different ways to come up with a password. We will look at one of the popular and at the same time valid schemes.

So, first let's decide on the number of characters in the password. As a rule, experts advise using at least 8 characters, but this is the bare minimum (by the way, many users use a 6-digit password at best). And although 8 characters is the minimum length recommended for a password, the actual number of characters in it should be at least 10-12. Tell me, is this a lot? But account security is hundreds and even thousands of times higher.

Now let's start creating a password. Remember, it must contain both numbers and letters of different case and even special characters.

The easiest option is to take some Russian word and write it in Latin layout. For example, the word smartphone on the English layout it looks like this - cvfhnajy. This word has 8 characters. Few? Wait, we're not done yet.

So the word cvfhnajy. We add a number to it, for example, some kind of memorable one. Let it be the number 201. We get the word cvfhnajy201. Just in case, we write the password with a capital letter to make it more difficult for attackers and we get Cvfhnajy201. Enough? No, you need to add special characters, for example, * . Now our password looks like this - Cvfhnajy201*, as many as 12 characters, while the password itself is complex, but easy to remember. Of course, it is given as an example and we strongly do not recommend using it - come up with your own, fortunately, it’s simple.

By the way, just in case, you can write down the password itself somewhere in a notepad or notebook, and remove the latter as far as possible from human eyes.

Editor's response

Last update: 09.09.2014

On September 8, a list of passwords for more than 1 million users of the Yandex mail service was made publicly available. Following this, the data of 4.5 million accounts of the mail service Mail.ru was posted online.

AiF.ru tells you which password you should definitely not choose, how to come up with the most secure code, and how not to forget where you wrote it down.

What not to do:

• Use the same password for all accounts.
• Use simple variations of the same password. If your name is Ivan, do not use the passwords “Ivan1” and “Ivan2” for different mailboxes.
• Use words that can be associated with you. Hackers can easily find information you write about yourself on in social networks, so the name of a cat or a child is a very unfortunate and unstable password.
• Use passwords that can be found in the dictionary. Special password-brute force programs try all the dictionary words in turn, trying to choose the one that will open access to your data.
• Create a password by typing Russian words with the English layout turned on. This method, popular among the Russian-speaking audience, seems reliable at first glance, but Russian hackers long ago created a special dictionary that allows them to try such passwords. Plus, the layout on the computer keyboard is combined, and it’s easy to type the desired combination in both English and Russian. But on tablets you can use only one language layout at a time, so typing such a password while going through language options is not easy. You will have to remember a very complex combination of letters and numbers.

How to come up with a strong password:

How to remember a complex password:

When you have already created a long and strong password, another problem arises: how to remember or store it, especially if there are several passwords and you do not have a good memory. Experts are unanimous - you need to store passwords in your head (you can, for example, use mnemonics to remember) or in special programs. For example, the “Password Manager” application for computers and smartphones as part of the Kaspersky PURE security solution allows you to store all passwords in a securely encrypted form without straining your memory. You only need to remember one - the one that opens this database. Denis Makrushin adds that “Password Manager” allows you to save personal information, such as PIN codes for SIM cards, activation codes for software, and passport data.

In order not to forget the password from the “Password Manager”, you should not come up with a complex combination; as a rule, in this case, individual Control questions and the answers to them. Unfortunately, if you forget the master password for the manager, it will be impossible to recover it and all data will be lost. It will only be possible to create a new database.

Today, two-factor authentication has become popular, when access to your personal account on the portal is provided after entering a password and additional factor. Most often this is a combination of numbers that comes as an SMS to your mobile number. Even if the password for the service ends up in the hands of attackers, they will not be able to gain access to it, since they do not have the second factor.

How not to forget where you wrote down the password:

If you decide to write down your password, you must always remember where exactly you recorded it. This can be done in the following ways:

1. On paper, hiding the sheet with the password in a book. It is advisable to place the book away from the electronic device where the password is used. Alternatively, put it in a bookcase, making sure to remember it well first.

You should not write your password in a diary, since this is the most common non-electronic option for recording it. Attackers are well aware of this and will check it first.

2. In “notes” mobile phone. However, in this case, it is worth “disguising” it so that if the device is lost, fraudsters cannot use the data.

• under the picture - just replace the file extension with jpg. Windows will change its icon, and by placing the file in a folder with other pictures, you will hide it securely. Naturally, you won’t be able to launch such a file by double-clicking the mouse, since, according to the extension, it will be picked up by your image viewer, which will immediately display an error message or show a blank screen. You need to open it by right-clicking and selecting “Open with”, and select any text editor, for example “Notepad”;
• hide the list of passwords by embedding it inside another file.

To do this, pack the file into a rar archive. We take any jpg image and place them in any folder. After that, launch the window (emulator) command line(Start -> Run -> cmd), go to the disk where we placed the source files, and then give the command to combine the files:

copy /b image name.jpg + file name.rar 333.jpg.

As a result, the output we get is a 333.jpg image with your file hidden inside. And if you want to view it, you will use the program that was used to create the archive.

MirSovetov found that Internet users, when coming up with passwords for their accounts, often make the same mistakes. Let's take a closer look at which protection will be easiest for hackers to crack:

1. A forward or reverse sequence of numbers is considered the most common password options. The first thing that comes to mind for a person who wants to get to personal data is to enter the combination “123456...” or the same numbers, but in reverse order, into the required field.
2. The second most popular password is the word “password”; the combination of letters “qwerty” is not inferior to it in popularity.
3. Internet users often enter as a password the name of the service in whose account they are creating protection.
4. Many people like to use their first or last name, date of birth or email address as a password. This data can be used in various combinations, written in uppercase letters or supplemented with combinations of numbers, but experienced hackers can easily break such protection if necessary.
5. Instead of their data, Internet users often use the data of their relatives: husband, children, parents. In this case, the keyword may be the child’s name or date of birth, mother’s maiden name, etc. Nicknames are also considered popular password options pet, make or number of the car, name of hometown.
6. The sequence of letters on the keyboard can also be classified as a simple and unreliable type of protection. Such sequences are very easy to calculate using special programs that will select the appropriate one from a variety of options in just a few minutes.
7. Simple words like “money”, “love”, “friendship”, “happiness” can also be considered dubious types of personal data protection.
8. Modern hacking programs have a special function for recognizing modifications, so that replacing letters in in simple words similar symbols will not help. Such a utility can easily recognize the letter “A” or “H” in the number 4, and the letter “O” in the number “0”.
9. Simple passwords also include simple sentences like “I love you.”
10. A very common mistake many people make is using the same passwords in different services. Any hacker, having cracked one password, will not be too lazy to check it on other accounts.

What should be a strong password?

1. The main rule is to use different passwords for all Internet accounts.
2. The security word or phrase must not be associated with the user's personal data. Avoid including first names, last names, dates of birth, pet names, etc. in your password.
3. It is desirable that for an outsider the password looks like an illogical sequence of words, letters or numbers. At the same time, the protective combination must be logical for the user himself, otherwise he will simply forget it.
4. The phone number should also not become a password.
5. The password must not be shared with anyone, especially strangers. Remember that even a call from a bank or other organization asking for information similar information in many cases is the work of scammers.
6. Some services send a temporary password by email after registering an account. This combination must be changed immediately after you enter the site.
7. You should not store passwords in your browser or on your computer desktop.
8. The security word must be long enough and contain not only letters, but also numbers and other valid characters.
9. To create a password, you can use a special generator. There are quite a lot of similar programs; among the popular services we can highlight the following: onlinepasswordgenerator.ru, securrity.ru, sadesign.pro, genpas.net. Using programs, you can not only create unique passwords, but also check your own combinations for reliability. For this purpose, use one of the following services: blog.kaspersky.ru, parolemanager.com or earninguide.biz.
10. Try not to log into your accounts from other people's computers, especially in Internet cafes or gaming clubs. In such places, you are likely to stumble upon a spyware program that reads the sequence of keystrokes on the keyboard.
11. Passwords should be changed periodically. The more reliable the protection, the less often you will have to do this, but even a long 12-digit combination of letters and numbers must be changed at least once every 2 years.

Ideas for creating a password

To come up with an original password that will be difficult to crack, use a well-known counting rhyme or short poem. Take the first letter from each word of such a rhyme, replace some of them with similar symbols, for example, replace the letters “o” with “0”, replace “z” with the number “3”, and the letter “h” with the number “4”. You can also use punctuation marks in the password if they are in the poem. For additional security, Cyrillic letters can be written in the Latin layout.

Instead of a quatrain or counting rhyme, some favorite saying is quite suitable. This could be a favorite philosophical quote, a famous phrase of a movie character, etc. The principle of creating a password in this case is the same as when using a counting rhyme. By the way, for greater complexity, some letters can be replaced not by similar numbers, but by some others. For example, instead of “h” you can write not “4”, but “8”, “5” or any other symbol.

As a protective word, you can use a specific term known to a narrow circle of specialists in a particular field. This is where technical or medical definitions, such as complex drug names, can come in handy.

It is not recommended to enter the date of birth of yourself or someone close to you in your password, but this does not mean that you cannot use others memorable dates. Such a number could, for example, indicate the day of the first kiss. The main thing is that the date is known only to you or a very limited circle of people. Instead of dots dividing the day, month and year, it is better to enter some symbol or letter.

To create a password, a so-called visual key can be used. Visually draw some simple drawing on the computer keyboard, for example, a cheerful face. Click in order on the keys through which your drawing passes.

How to save your password

Having come up with a complex and original password, the most important thing is not to forget it later. In order not to rely solely on your memory, a combination of symbols can be written down and saved in different ways:

1. The easiest way is to copy the security word onto a piece of paper and hide it in your favorite book or put it on a closet shelf. It is not recommended to write the password in a notepad, as attackers can steal the organizer.
2. The combination of characters can be recorded in mobile phone notes, but the note itself cannot be signed with the word “passwords” or any similar definitions.
3. The password can also be saved on your computer, but to do this you will need to disguise the file well. To do this, you can change the text extension to a graphic one and hide the file in a folder with pictures. To open a document, you will need to right-click on it and select a text editor from the list of programs.

Hello, dear readers of my blog!

Today I would like to tell you about how to come up with the right password.

While registering on many sites, I saw that they all had different requirements for access codes. Based on this, I developed perfect formula to create a password. It will be different on almost all sites, but at the same time, you will remember it and will not forget it! 🙂

Why is it important to make them different?

Before we start creating a password, I would like to say a few words about the importance of having different passwords.

One password for all web services is certainly convenient, but dangerous. After all, it can be stolen not only by the administrators of the sites on which you are registered, but also by hackers.

Knowing him, it is not difficult to find out personal information or obtain any secret data and documents.

Having access to your mailbox, you can change or recover passwords from other resources. Or conduct correspondence on your behalf. Therefore, I recommend that you take this issue seriously. In addition to creating it, I advise you to change it periodically or, if possible, connect an SMS login confirmation account. For example, how this is implemented on VKontakte. Moreover, it's free :)

We come up with a password (for example, for government services)

The list of requirements is suitable for many sites:

1. It should be a minimum of 8 characters, as I noticed that some sites require this length;
2. You must use at least one number;
3. At least one letter is capital;
4. Use the first 2 letters of the site name in the password (this is necessary so that the password is always different);
5. Use punctuation. It's not necessary, but if it happens, that's good.

Perfect password

Let's say we need to come up with a password for the Mail.ru website.

Let's choose a punctuation mark, let it be “!”.

Let's take the first 2 letters of the site, make the first letter capital - “Ma”.

5 more characters left. I can recommend using the last 2 digits of your year of birth. Let’s say “90”.

3 characters left. It's up to you to choose. You can enter your full name. Let’s say “baa”.

So, we get the password - !Ma90baa

For yandex.ru, it will be - !Ya90baa

For rambler.ru - !Ra90baa

For vk.com - !Vk90baa

For Skype - !Sk90baa

It is not necessary to write in the same order as mine. You can change the symbols in places as you wish, as it is easier for you to remember. For example: Sk90baa!, Skbaa90!, 90Skbaa!, 90baaSk! etc.

You can choose any number of digits in the password, at least 5, it is at your discretion. Or you can add numbers to the end, and 3 letters before them.

Well, that’s all :) Now you will have passwords for all your accounts and will never forget them. 😎