Alliant Credit Union

Passwords were around long before the Internet age. Military sentries (and speakeasy bouncers) would not let people enter an area unless they spoke the correct password. Now, passwords are essential if you want to use the Internet to make online purchases, bank online, access your mail or communicate with friends.

Your challenge is to create passwords that are complex enough to elude hackers but easy enough for you to remember. Ideally, you’ll have a different password for each site you use.

First, here are several don’ts:

• Don’t use a word that can be found in the dictionary
• Avoid using the names of your kids, relatives or favorite sports team, as well as your birthdate, anniversary, graduation date, social security number, email address, phone number or car license plate number
• Don’t use information that you have posted on social media
• Avoid using the same password for multiple sites. (75% of people use their email password for Facebook and for financial sites, according to BitDefender, an anti-virus company. In particular, don’t use the same password for multiple financial sites or you risk losing your finances from all those sites)
• Don’t leave your passwords out for people to see. That means don’t keep a password list in your wallet, in your desk at work or on easy-to-spot sticky notes. If you must write down a password list, keep it well hidden

And now for some do’s:

• Visa® recommends creating a password between six and 32 characters
• Use a mix of upper and lower case letters, special characters (such as # or *) and numbers
• Spell words backward (for instance, Chicago becomes Ogacihc)
• Use an acronym from some phrase you like (for instance, “Today will be a Great Day for me” becomes TwbaGDfme or TwbaGD4me)
• Change your passwords often
• Take the first three letters of the site you’re entering and add them to the beginning or end of a strong password (for instance TwbaGD4me is strong and becomes becomes even stronger when you add more characters, such as TwbaGD4meFac for Facebook and TwbaGD4mePay for PayPal)
• Consider using a password management application if you have a lot of passwords to remember. There are lots of choices available for these programs. You’ll then need to remember only one password – to get into the password manager application.