Need a new password?

There have been a number of stories in the news recently about security breaches in large companies. Usually, these are companies that we would assume are safe.  The message at the end of all these stories is usually about the importance of changing your password regularly.  It can be difficult to follow the suggestion to regularly update your password for each account.  If we think about the number of passwords the average person has, it can be a bit overwhelming to think about regular updates.

I know that I struggle with having enough different passwords for all my different accounts. The internet experts advise us not to use the same password on multiple accounts and not to write those passwords down on paper.

Here are a few more tips for keeping your accounts safe:

• Never share your password with anyone.
• Choose a password that is easy for you to remember.
• Choose a password that is difficult for others to guess.
• Don’t use a password on multiple accounts.
• Stay away from using your name or other family member or pet’s names.

Here are some suggestions for choosing a difficult to guess but easy to remember password.

• Longer passwords are better than short passwords. Try to use at least 8 characters.
• Use the first letters of the words in a sentence that is easy for you to remember but hard for anyone else to guess. My First Car Was ­A Green Chevy.
• Use punctuation in those sentence passwords to get to 8 characters. Remember that the punctuation does not necessarily need to be placed at the end of the sentence. Your password could look like this. MFCW!AGC. You can use additional punctuation and numbers to reduce the chance that anyone could guess your password.
• Choose several words that do not typically go together, or choose a short phrase.

I plan to use some of these ideas to revise passwords on many of my accounts as the new year begins.

Liz Meimann

I received both my undergraduate and graduate degrees in Food Science at Iowa State University. I love to quilt, sew, cook, and bake. I spent many years gardening, canning, and preserving food for my family when my children were at home.

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