Home

CybAlert - One partner for all your Social Media Security

CybAlert Social Media Password Improvement Hint 3

We are going to share with you what the bad guys look for when they attempt to gain access to your communities and accounts.

The bad guys understand our behavior better than we understand our own behavior.

Remember all the sites that ask you the year of your birth before they issue you an ID ?

The intent is to insure you are not 13 years old or younger. The problem is that many of us find it easy to include the year of our birth as part of our password.

When we provide the year of our birth to qualify... we are also in some cases giving up part or password.

Also, the bad guys have applications that try different iterations using years... Afterall, the largest population on the web was born between 1984 and 2004. Its not really hard to 20 combinations of numerics.

The next largest group was born between 1963-1983. Once again its really only 20 iterations.

Than we look at the 20 most popular first names.... in combination with the year of birth and it's not hard to discover a poor password.

So try to avoid using the year of your birth in your password... or your first name.

If you are currently using your year of birth and/or your first name...its a good idea to change it.

Return to main LinkedIn page
Return to safe passwords hint #2
Proceed to safe passwords hint #4