Last week I looked at creating a secure password by using upper/lowercase letters, numbers and special characters. I also explained how to make it easy to remember. This weeks article is based on making a stronger password and how to generally how to increase your security.

Making passwords hard to break isn't just about making them long, it's making them complicated and very hard to remember. A small script written by Steve Gibson auto writes a password combining both randomness and length. You can find the site here: Password Generator. Because of the nature of the password it becomes extremely difficult to remember thus making it useless. Or is it? Originally this password generator and idea of how to store the passwords was pointed out to me by @electricjonny and I spoke to $spinegrinder about a similar method. For the meantime though I will jump to another security issue raised by =Tepara.

Both of the methods are linked and so I'll mention this first as I'll point out later. The idea is that you use a different password for every site, so one maybe for your e-mail address, one for DeviantART, another for eBay say. If each of these passwords are as complicated as the ones created by that Password Generator I mentioned before you are bound to forget them and will be stuck. The idea is that you save all these site passwords in a text file with the relevant site that you use them on. Once this has been saved you can then store it on a thumb drive and then password protect it using a program like TrueCrypt (suggested by @electricjonny). With this you only have to remember one password to open up the thumb drive and get the passwords. Remember the password for this though must be very secure as well unless someone else could easily access the other passwords if the thumb drive was obtained by someone else. The two topics were related as storing multiple passwords that are complicated can be easy to forget.

So how else do you keep your passwords safe?

Basically I am just repeating parts of what $realitysquared said but it's all important information.

To ensure maximum security use different passwords for each site (as stated above) so if one password is found their ability to access other sites using your account is limited.

Change your password(s) often, every 60 days or so is a good recommendation, anything lower then this to be honest maybe a bit paranoid and anything too far above maybe risking it (depends on how important your account(s) are).

Never tell anyone your password(s), not even your family or friends, you never know when they could tell someone by accident...or on purpose.

Don't make a habit of writing passwords down. If you have multiple passwords that are complicated store them in a text file on an encrypted memory stick as I mentioned above.

dA staff will never ask for your password. This applies to most sites as well like PayPal, eBay, banking sites etc. So don't ever tell anyone your password even if they look official (like official e-mails etc.). I'm just repeating what $realitysquared said so that you take it into consideration.

I hope you have found this article both interesting and useful and I hope you can make your accounts more secure using these methods. If you have any questions you would like me to answer in another article (based around passwords and security that is) please just note me so I can keep track of the questions.

Thanks for reading,
Skyrail

DISCLAIMER: I am not official dA staff so please do not note me any queries or problems with security on dA (unless you think I may be able to help). I can not guarantee that I can answer your questions either.