Your online accounts may contain a lot of your personal information. Protect them with a strong password that’s hard to guess and turn on two-factor authentication. Here’s some advice from our Stone Bank IT department:
- Character Variety: Choose a password that includes at least one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, one number, and one special character (e.g., !, @, #, $).
- Make It Long: Aim for at least 15 characters.
- Avoid Using Common Words: Don’t use easily guessable words or sequences
(e.g., “password”, “123456”). - Unique Passwords: Do not reuse passwords from other accounts or previous
passwords.
Creating a password using the first letter of each word in a phrase is a great way to generate a strong and memorable password. Here’s how you can do it:
- Choose a phrase: Pick a sentence or phrase that you can easily remember. For example, “My favorite hobby is reading books every night before bed.”
- Use the first letter of each word: Take the first letter of each word in the phrase. For the example above, it would be: Mfhirbenbb.
- Add complexity: To make it even stronger, you can add numbers and special characters. For instance, you could replace some letters with numbers or symbols, or add them at the beginning or end. For example: Mfh!rbenbb2024.
Pick Security Questions Only You Can Answer
When you create an account, you may have to give answers to a few security questions. Some sites may periodically ask you to answer these questions as a security measure to confirm your identity. You also may have to answer them if you need to reset your password. Hackers could try to guess your answers to get into your account, so pick security questions only you can answer.
- Avoid questions with a limited number of responses that hackers can guess, like the color of your first car.
- Avoid questions with answers that someone could find online or in public records, like your zip code, birthplace, or mother’s maiden name.
If you can’t avoid those questions, treat them like a password and use random and long answers. Make sure the question and answer are unique, not ones that you use on other sites. And be sure you can remember your answers.
The opinions and recommendations expressed herein are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of Stone Bank. Stone Bank nor any of their employees assumes any legal liability for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of this information. Stone Bank’s website may contain links to websites of other organizations that are no longer protected by our privacy policy or security practices.