Gadgetory

banks social networks email even your storage cloud every month we log into dozens of websites using a password but no way do you want people guessing what your password is and logging into your accounts hopefully I don't have to tell you that using passwords like one two three four five six QWERTY or your first name are not okay I'm Sharon Vaknin frisina and today I will show you how to create secure passwords and how to keep track of them all to start a good password is made of uppercase and lowercase letters a variety of punctuation marks and numbers ideally our passwords would look something like this but that's not exactly realistic so try this method make up a phrase like the Giants should win the World Series in 2013 then just take the initials numbers and punctuation from the phrase to create a password that looks like this if you want to see just how secure your password is head to a website like how secure is my password net the website will rate your password based on how long it would take to crack so if you enter something weak like 1 2 3 4 5 6 the meter would tell you why your password is so crappy and how you can fix it I don't recommend putting passwords that you actually plan to use in these websites though they might not be secure and are only meant for educational purposes now that you know how to create super secure passwords make sure you're using a different one for almost every service you use why well because if someone cracks one password and you use it for everything else your online life will be compromised the thing is it's going to get really hard to remember all those crazy passwords you made so you have a few options one memorize all your passwords ok don't do that to write them down on a piece of paper and put them somewhere safe this is the old-school method but it works the obvious gotcha here though is that if someone finds that piece of paper you're in trouble the third and best option is to use a password manager like LastPass you can grab the program for just about any grading system and browser over on the scene at download page LastPass stores and encrypts all of your passwords for you and auto fills your account logins and whenever you create a new online account LastPass can generate a secure password for you the only scary part about LastPass is that it's all kept secure with one master password so make sure that one's extra hard to crack trading off greater overall security and convenience for that flaw will be completely up to you and just like any online service LastPass could be susceptible to security issues of its own now that you know how to make and manage secure passwords go give your security a little makeover and if you have any questions tweet me and subscribe to my Facebook page for more tips like this for CNET I'm Sharon Vaknin