Full Name	*
Suburb location	*
Email adress	*
Contact Number	*
How can we help you?
Status	Existing Customer New Customer
How did you find about us	Choose One... Google Yahoo! Bing Search AOL Search Other Search Engine Local Newspaper PC Doctor Vehicle Radio Friend Yellow Pages Website Link Other
If Search Engine, what Keywords phrase was used
*mandatory required

eLearning Center

Creating a Secure Password

The Original PC Doctor have noticed that a lot of peoples email account and Facebook accounts have been hacked into and are getting messages sent to all their contacts attempting to scam them out of their money or passwords.

Creating a secure password is not as easy as using of the name of your date of birth or your mothers maiden name as obscure as you might think it may be, password crackers are getting more and more powerful and the best way to protect yourself is to understand how password crackers work.

So far the most common accounts that have been hacked into are the ones where your password is one of the following things:

• Your name backwards - Nicole -> elocin
• Your name and the year of your birth - Nicole1985
• Your date of birth - 01/01/1985 -> 01011985
• Your name then 123 or 12345 - Nicole 12345
• Or one of the most 20 used passwords to date:

123456 12345 123456789 Password iloveyou princess rockyou 1234567 12345678 abc123

Nicole Daniel babygirl monkey Jessica Lovely michael Ashley 654321 Qwerty

If your password happens to fall into one of the above categories, we would recommend an immediate change.

How do password crackers work?
If someone wants to crack your password unfortunately they are not going to sit in front of your computer and try to guess it one word at a time (unless they already have a pretty good idea of what it might be). It is more likely that they will use password cracking software to look at millions of possible combinations a second. Password cracking software usually starts by going through every word in the dictionary and after that will try different combinations of words, numbers, letters and symbols until they find your password.

How do I make my password secure?
Simple, maths dictates that the longer and more random the combinations of letters, numbers and symbols you use, the longer it will take to crack. The harder it is the more chance they will get bored and move on. Next time you are making a password, make it more complicated but remember that your password is only useful if you can remember it - writing it down on a piece of paper is not an option!

Creating a secure password
There are a few easy tips to make a secure password, and a lot of sites enforce these kinds of passwords when creating an account e.g. some sites will say it must contain one capital letter, a numeral and has to be at least 6-8 characters long- this is slowly becoming the standard for creating an account online. For personal use online your password should contain 8 or more characters, at least one digit (0-9), one capital letter and one symbol (some websites may not allow a symbol, that is okay just make it as tough as you can). It should not contain any dictionary words. An example of a good password would be: MBi2Ma! To help remember this password, it is constructed out of things which I would remember. (M)y (Bi)rthday is on the (2)nd of (Ma)y (!) Have a play with your own passwords and see what you can come up with.