Celebrate World Password Day By Creating a Strong Password for Yourself

Ever heard of World Password Day? It was celebrated last May 7, a day dedicated to remind every Internet user to protect their identities and information by changing their passwords. We exist in a password-driven era, where your main line of security to your personal files and important data depend on the type of password you've set. Every year, hackers have leaked millions of passwords from sites such as Google, Facebook, and Yahoo! Banking and online shopping sites have also been a main target of these cybercriminals where they decrypt countless passwords in order to steal valuable information, including money.

Having a strong password is one of the most important things you need to protect your identity on the Internet. Anytime you access a personal information over the Web, you'll be asked to enter a password. A strong password reduces your chance of falling prey into the hands of scammers because it will be harder for them to guess or decipher it.

So how do you protect yourself from being a victim of these cybercrimes? Try following this simple guide on how to create a strong password.

A strong password must consist of at least eight characters long. It should contain at least six uppercase and lowercase letters, one number, and one special character (like ! or @). When creating a password, always keep this in mind -- the longer, the better.

When creating a password, avoid using words, terms, or names that identifies you or any of your personal information. Here's a list of names or terms you should avoid when creating a password combination:

• your children's or parent's names
• your birth date
• your pets' names
• your street address
• your first, middle or last name
• "123456"
• "password"
• "abc123"
• "iloveyou"

One tip in making a good six-letter password is to think of your favorite things like a phrase from a song, movie, or TV series. For example, you can use the famous line from the movie Jerry Maguire "you complete me" as your password. Next, you'll want to make it a single word and capitalize some of the letters. You can also mix it with a number and a special character to make it more unique. So from the original phrase "you complete me," you can create it into a strong password like "Ucomp!etem3."

It's also important to remember to avoid picking a password that is too general when picking a password you're planning to built with. For example, do not use words like "chocolate" or "pizza," but instead be specific with those like "pistachio ice cream" or "four cheese pizza" to make it less common and harder to guess.

And last, but not the least, never use the same password or variation of that password more than once. The idea may be a hassle though, but it will give you more protection if you have a different password for each website that you access to get personal information from or perform transactions on.