How to Keep Your Passwords Safe While Surfing the Web

These days everything from pizza delivery to medical records are ordered up over the Web. If someone finds out you like pepperoni instead of sausage, it may not be a big deal, but would you want your medical and financial records available to anyone? It is important that you keep your passwords safe while surfing the Web.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Internet access

1. The first step to keeping your passwords safe on the Web is to make sure your PC is safe. Don’t keep all of your passwords in one place on your PC. Make sure your PC is protected via one of the many firewall products available to you. For more help on firewalls, you can uses Windows Firewall if you are using Windows XP or Vista, or you can visit Symantec, Norton or ZoneLabs Web sites to download your own personal firewall.
2. Be careful when responding to email asking for personal information. In general, most sites will identify you by name if requesting personal information. It is almost always best NOT to respond to emails asking for password information and instead visit the site by opening a new browser window and going to that site directly.
3. Be careful what password information you give out when at public computers (such as at your library). Many sites store your password information in temporary files. The next user at the PC could access these.
4. Most sites requesting your password should be encrypted with SSL. Before typing in your password, check that the page you are visiting is encrypted. You can easily verify this by making sure a padlock symbol is displayed at the bottom of your browser screen.
5. The MOST important step and keeping your passwords safe, however, is to simply choose strong passwords. Picking passwords based on birthdays, names or actually any English words are relatively easy for a determined person to guess. Make your passwords at least 8 or more characters long and include upper and lower case letters as well as at least one number and one special character. This will go a long way to making sure your password is not easily broken by anyone.
6. Change your passwords fairly regularly. This will limit the amount of information that you might inadvertently give out should a password of yours be guessed.
7. Many Web sites now have a security question which you can answer in the event you forget your password. Remember that your password is only as safe as your security question. Do not pick a security question which is an issue of public record, such as your mother’s maiden name or the city in which you were born.

Tips & Warnings

• Use variations on a basic password for different sites. This allows you to have different passwords at each site while still making it relatively easy for you to remember.
• Look for the padlock symbol at the bottom of your browser page before entering your password.
• Be careful of emails requesting password information. Go to the site requesting the information directly instead.