We’re continuing our series on identity theft protection and this time, we’re focusing on passwords. Whether you’re a successful female professional or a harried woman business owner, chances are you’ve got more than one password–everyone does. Our goal with this article is to give you some tried and true tips to help you optimize your passwords for privacy and more importantly, help you avoid a password breach that could lead to identity theft, or worse.
2 Password Don’ts you want to steer clear of
Don’t use the same password for every site: Let’s say a hacker has gained access to your email account where you receive your bank account and credit card statements. They decide to click through to the bank’s website to see if they can get lucky and gain access to your personal information there. Their first guess would be to use your email address as your username (since you did receive your statement there) and their next guess would be to use the same password used on the email account. If you use the same password on every site, you’ve now opened up a major can of worms.
Don’t use keyboard patterns as your password: QWERTY, 123456 and ASDFGH are some of the most common passwords and among the first guesses by a hacker. Never use patterns found on a keyboard for this very reason.
2 Savvy Password Must Do’s that keep your privates private
Do use special characters and numbers: Mix things up a bit! When possible, use a “!” to substitute an “i” or a “3” for an “e.” Passwords with a combination of special characters, numbers and letters are much harder to guess.
Do use phrases instead of single words: You like cheesecake so you decide to use “cheesecake” as your password. Simple to remember but also simple to hack. Turn that simple word into a solid and strong password by using a short phrase. “I love cheesecake” can turn into “!luvCh33sec@ke” for an almost impossible to guess password.
At the end of the day, an ounce of prevention is worth pounds of trouble. The average identity theft incident can represent a cost and losses upwards of thousands of dollars.
According to Motorists Insurance company’s informative Identity Theft 911® blog:
- Losses stemming from identity theft totaled $56.6 billion in 2005, 3.5 times greater than total losses of $16.2 billion from all property crimes (burglary, larceny and motor vehicle theft) combined.
- Victims of identity theft and fraud spend, on average, $2,412 in out-of-pocket expenses to restore their financial standing.
- It takes victims an average of 175 hours to clean up their lives after identity theft.
- Some 135 companies disclosed massive private data-security breaches in 2005, resulting in the potential susceptibility of at least 57 million people to identity theft.
- Credit card fraud comprised 26 percent of identity theft complaints in 2005.
For even more tips on passwords and internet security, check out Wells Fargo‘s online, email and mobile security tips page here.