Do you know that an average person has to keep at least 5-20 passwords and pins which could include ATM pins, email passwords, passwords to social media accounts, office logins, PC login, phone logins and many more? The truth is passwords are not that secured, they can be easily cracked and compromised. Like the saying, “if you can remember it, then it is not safe” and Hacker are able to crack through your username and password.
In the 1960s, computers started using passwords. In that year, computers could only manage one user at a time and this made Fernando Corbato to find a way to allow people share the computing power to multiple but in other to allow privacy, Corbato created a password.
How safe are you?
In the past before the Federal Bureau of Investigation shut down the site, hackers could get everything about your public online keys, passwords and username by just entering your email address on sites like weleakinfo.com, dehashed, Snusbase and many more, and everything you think is safe but is actually a bridge prior to the search becomes risible to the searcher for a fee of $2 or less.
Passwords are a very big problem as they are either difficult to remember and the owners lost access to their accounts or they are too easy to remember making it easy to be hacked. Most data breaches are caused by the password owners themselves by leaking it out unknowingly. Breaches could occur through phishing, using other people’s credentials (stolen credentials), and espionage (spying on people’s information by the government or other powerful organization). Stolen passwords caused the loss of $8.19 Million in 2019.
How to protect yourself
In 2004, the National institute of Standard and Technology published a document of how a password should look like which was an average of 8 character long, having a combination of Uppercase, lowercase, Number and special character. The passwords should be changed regularly but in 2017 the same National Institute of Standard and Technology published that people should use long easy phrases instead of characters and should only change the passwords if it had been hacked.
Also, with innovations, people’s data and finances can be a little protected. Using authenticators can be helpful. Using other two factor authentications such as 2FA, emails and messages can also be very useful. With authentication, it requires something you possess, something you know and in most cases you. The password is something you know, the 2FA number or email and or phone SMS is something you possess, then the third is a success thanks to technology and that is recognition either fingerprint, facial recognition or iris and voice recognition.