What is a good online banking password?

[Robert]

I want something secure.

[Jamfo]

You can really use anything you like, but here are a few good tips:

*Use as many characters as the password will allow. If they say make a password between 8 and 15 characters, use all 15 characters. The longer the password, the harder it will be to hack.

*Use a mix of capital letters, lower case letters, numbers and symbols (if allowed).

*Do not use something simple thinking it's secure. p@ssw0rd is NOT secure and many "l33t" versions of common words are easily hacked.

*If possible, use a nonsense combination of small words crammed together and do some replacement of the letters with symbols. For example, if you have a 15 character allowance, you could use something like P@p3Rw0bBleSp3LL. Since it's not a single word, and the words have nothing to do with each other, this password will be more difficult to crack.

*Try not to use words or sources that can be "socially engineered" back to you. For example, if you are a fan of the Alabama college team, and this is mentioned all over your Facebook page, don't use anything dealing with Alabama as a password. Good hackers can find your likes and hobbies from social media and will use that to try and hack your password. The more nonsensical your password, the harder it will be to guess.


Finally, you also want to try and thwart any attempts to work around your password. If the site you are creating the password for asks you for security questions, use nonsense answers for those as well. For example, if the security question says "what was the make and model of your first car?' give an answer like "Red Barchetta" or "Little Red Corvette" or any other thing other than the truth. You can write down and remember the nonsense answers you give in case you ever need to use the security questions, but a hacker won't be able to scour around your social media or other sites to find old references that may actually give away those answers.

So there you go... if you follow those recommendations, you should be able to create a nice, secure password that will be difficult to hack. Unfortunately, nothing is IMPOSSIBLE to hack... but those guidelines should help you to make as secure an on-line presence for your bank as possible.

Good luck!

[jimbo]

Gibson Research Corp. Ultra High Security Password Generator

https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm

[Leslie Lopresto]

The Master Bater