![]() The days of keeping all your passwords in your phone notes and sending them to others via text are over. Going through the trouble of creating long, complex passwords for your accounts will not protect you if you don’t store them securely. However, if you have MFA enabled then it will be much more difficult for a cybercriminal with your stolen password to access your account. Usually, accounts will give you the option to require MFA only if you are logging in on a device that is not your personal, primary device.ĭata breaches are common, so it’s easy for one of your passwords to become compromised. There are a variety of MFA options, including generating codes on an authentication app, getting a code by SMS text or answering security questions. MFA is a second method of authentication you have to enter in addition to your password in order to access an account. Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is an important additional security layer to passwords that protects your account in the case of a data breach. Choosing a password that you change slightly for every account is not an effective way to prevent hacking, even if it’s a long, complex password. For example, if the compromised password was weakpassword8, they may try weakpassword9. It’s important to note that cybercriminals often guess similar passwords in credential-stuffing attacks. However, if you used unique passwords for each of your accounts, then only one account will be compromised. This is when one set of credentials is stolen and a cybercriminal uses them to try to gain access to other accounts.įor example, if a data leak exposes your password to your email account, the cybercriminal could then try to use the same credentials to access your bank accounts, retirement accounts, credit card accounts and so on. One of the most common ways passwords are compromised is through credential-stuffing attacks. A password manager is software that securely stores your passwords and allows you to access them from any device. The easiest way to remember passwords, however, is by using a password manager and storing them in a digital vault with zero-knowledge encryption. You could also use words with numbers and symbols instead of letters (“dog bone” becomes “D0G#!B0N398”). Strong passwords are hard to remember, but you can make it easier by using mnemonic techniques, such as using the first letter of each word from a favorite quote with numbers and letters added in (“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” becomes “iwtBot%72#iwtwot”).
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