When you consider the amount of information that’s now accessible online and how connected everything and everyone is, security is a huge concern. In many instances, if someone were to gain access to a useless Social Network you tried once, they can use that information to gain access to everything including your email and even more frightening, possibly your banking information. Here are some common mistakes people make with their passwords:

Using Common Phrases or Words

LifeHacker recently published a post entitled ‘How I’d Hack Your Weak Passwords‘. In it, the author John Pozadzides listed ten words and phrases people often use as their passwords. And while the name of your spouse might be a bit more difficult to guess, a little bit of quick research online should take care of that. After all, we reveal this seemingly innocent information all the time in regular conversation.

All it takes are one of the free software programs out there or a simple script for a computer to automatically figure out your login details. Therefore, always add numbers, symbols, and upper-case letters to make the password more complex.

Using the Same Password Everywhere

Tim Nash and his associates recently experimented with password security and they discovered 92% of people use the same password for their email and all other sites. They also blindly gave permission for websites to use that information. This means that many people willingly give up this information leaving them open to hacking and theft of all kinds. Never use the same password!

Password security is extremely important at FatCow and that’s why we require a ‘strong’ password criteria and have certain ‘rules’ that need to be followed when choosing your password. You can find out more about our password security in our knowledge base. Just never use PASSWORD, as your password!