How secure are the user names and passwords you have selected? In this article we will outline a few things to consider when selecting passwords for computer or online accounts.

Here are a few guidlines to consider.

Do NOT use the same password for multiple accounts. Ideally you should not use the same user name or password for any account.

Use long passwords which employ at least eight characters with a combination of numbers as well as lower and uppercase letters.

Often hackers use utilities designed to randomly generate letters and numbers. These utilities try different combinations of letters and numbers and will attempt to randomly guess passwords in multiple attempts over a selected time period until the password and user name are found.

Do not use common names such as titles, well known names or nicknames. This includes the names of your children, pets or the model of your vehicle.

The biggest mistake I see is people using default passwords such as “password”. If your account has a default password change it immediately.

When selecting numbers to use do not select birthdays, social security numbers or any easy to remember number that may be associated to you.

The best practice would be to randomly generate unique user name and passwords. There are many programs available which can generate and store user names and passwords, and then store this information in a password protected database. Once again if you use these types of software be sure to make your initial password at least eight characters with upper and lower case lettering and include numbers.

Does anyone else find it hard to pick up work after vacationing? Having completed a weeks worth of vacation I am back to the grind….well….sort of.

I am using this day to read up on new stories and technologies for new content on the site. Please bare with me while I compose myself and get my head out of the vacation cloud. Of course this is not easily done…

As you can see from the last post we are now taking posted questions to better serve our users. As well I would like to add if there is a new technology or concern you would like for me to address please post a comment to this blog. I would be happy to research and address topics for our users.

After all….It is you the end user for which we create the content.

In the old days PC911 had a forum where you could post questions and answers to. Now that we have this fancy new fangled blog technology I would like to ask you to post your tech support questions here and we will address them.

A lot of people have asked for the forums back but we would prefer to use this blog as a means to help you with your computer problems. Post your question as a comment below and we will help you. It’s that simple.