Illustrated below are a few ways account passwords can be compromised:
- Someone you know is deliberately trying to cause you harm.
There are many people who might want to take a peek into someone’s personal life. If these people know them well, they might be able to guess their email password and use password recovery options to access their other accounts.
- You become the victim of a brute-force attack.
Whether a hacker attempts to access a group of user accounts or just one person, brute-force attacks are the go-to strategy for cracking passwords. These attacks work by systematically checking all possible passphrases until the correct one is found. If the hacker already has an idea of the guidelines used to create the password, this process becomes even easier to execute.
- There’s data breaches.
Every few months, it seems another huge company reports a hacking resulting in the compromising of millions of accounts. Data breaches happen more often than reported on the news.
What can you do?
Although data breaches are out of your control, it’s still imperative to create passwords that can withstand brute-force attacks and relentless frenemies. Avoiding both types of attacks is dependent on the complexity of your password.
You think a password similar to yours is un-hackable? This test will show how long will it take for a computer to crack a password similar to yours. This is a fun little exercise. Try it. VERY IMPORTANT: Please do not use your actual password, but rather, something similar.
https://howsecureismypassword.net/
