Digital Citizenship: Passwords

Creating a secure password is an important step in ensuring that your personal information does not get into the wrong hands.  As we start a new school year, it is a great time to review your account security.  These tips can also be used to teach your students how to create a strong password.

Password Tips

• Your password should not be written down and placed on or in your desk, on your laptop, or in planner.  
• Don't create obvious passwords.  For example, your child's name(s), your spouses name, your grandchildren's names, your birthday, your address, or your phone number.
• Check out the Worst Passwords List.  Passwords that make this list are very common passwords used by people.  These include: password, 123456, 12345678, football, baseball, abc123, letmein, and welcome.  If you are using one of these passwords, change it immediately.
• Create unique passwords for your email and bank accounts.  These passwords should not be the same and should not be used on other sites. Representatives from your bank and your email provider will NEVER ask for your password.  
• Don't save your password to your web browser.  If someone gains access to your computer or logs into your browser, they will have access to all of your passwords.

How to create a secure password?

• Substitute a number for the same letter in every password you create.  For example, you could replace the number 9 for E's, or the number 6 for S.  
• Make a compound word. For example: Ilovetoquilt, theRedSoxwillbeattheYankees.
• Combine the above two methods to create a phrase with upper, lower, numbers and special characters.  For example: Il0vech0c0late!, Myfav0ritec0l0r1sred., D0gsrule,Catsdr00l!
• Use a line from a nursery rhyme, favorite song, name of your favorite book.  Take the 1st letter from each word.  For example: Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.  Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.  Becomes HDsoaw.HDhagf.
• If you want to reuse a similar password on multiple sites try including the name of the site somewhere in your password.   For Example: Iluv2read!Amazon, Iluv2read!Ebay, Iluv2read!CVS
• Use a password manager like LastPass, KeePass, or Dashlane.  Some are free, others have a yearly cost.  These managers will remember your passwords so that you don't have to and will go further to audit your password making sure that you are not using it in too many places, help you to create stronger passwords in general, and even change passwords for you when your account may have been hacked.

Further reading:

• 10 Important passwords tips everyone should know.  Cool Kat Teacher
• 5 Best Password Managers. Life Hacker