5 most common password mistakes you need to avoid

Here's how you can protect yourself.

Passwords can be an open door for hackers to attack our finances and identity. Learn the most common password mistakes that hackers hope you’ll make.

1.Choosing an easy to guess password.

Common mistakes people make with passwords make them easily hackable.

Those mistakes include using easy passwords like birthdays, creating common passwords like 1234, using brand names, singer references, or sports to create a password.

2.Not including enough numbers and special characters.

Try to inject as many symbols and numbers and a variety of characters, but relatively easy for you to remember.

Substituting symbols for alphabets is also a good idea as long as the choice of word is fairly complex, so kr3st3v@798! instead of kresteva798! could work.

3.Using the same password for multiple sites.

Using the same password to log in to every account is a critical mistake that many people make. Even with just one set of log-in credentials, hackers can log into other sites using the same email and password.

4.Never changing your passwords

There are some users who recommend changing your password every year, which is reasonable to consider if it isn’t too much of a burden. However, this can be tedious and unnecessary for power users with hundreds of online accounts that already have strong, unique passwords, so in this case, we just recommend changing new passwords as vulnerabilities to affected services are brought to light.

5.Creating a password that's too short

It is advisable to choose passwords of a significant length, preferably greater than 15. This makes passwords resistant to both online brute-forcing as well as offline hash cracking.