World Password Day: 5 Ways To Make Sure Your Accounts Are Protected From Hackers Online

Today, May 2, is World Password Day. That means it's the perfect time to review the security of your online accounts, and change things around to keep yourself safe. After all, you don't want to realise you're unprotected after someone has already stolen your account.

To that end, there's one thing you need to keep in mind. In any cybersecurity system, the weakest link is the human using it. To that end, Google has a few tips on what you can do to ensure you're as safe as you can be online.

1. Don't reuse passwords

This is one of the worst possible security gaffes you can make. The idea is that your various accounts should each be insulated from disaster befalling one of them. If one of your accounts is hacked, that means the perpetrator can't simply use the same password to unlock your other accounts.

2. Use a password manager

If you're not going to be able to remember a unique password for each individual account, the simplest solution is a password manager. Simply pick a strong password for it, and it'll serve to keep all your other accounts secured as well. To an extent anyway, but it's your best option.

3. Use a passphrase and not a password

The old advice was that a strong password is at least eight characters long and a mix of upper and lower case, as well as numbers and special characters. However, we've since realised that's not good enough. For one thing, eight-character passwords can be cracked incredibly easily. For another, a collection of phrases works better than a nonsense word.

Just imagine you have an incredibly complex password, filled with numbers and asterisks. Odds are you have to write this down to even remember it, which automatically makes it that much less secure. Instead, a nonsense phrase like "prettypurplebuttercups" is easier to remembers, while also being harder to brute force by a bot.

4. Set up two-factor authentication

Two-factor authentication (2FA) is frankly a very secure but infrequently used method of staying safe. Most people don't bother with it because it's too cumbersome to use on a daily basis. Then again, you're going to wish you'd activated it once you've gotten hacked.

5. Use a physical key if you can

The mother of all 2FA systems, a physical keep is incredibly simple to use and nigh impossible to bypass. Basically, instead of sending you an OTP via SMS or something of the sort, your second step of verification is plugging in a USB device that acts as your key. It's like locking a safe with a digital code and a physical key as well. Without one, the other is useless.

Hackers realise just how valuable passwords can be, and it's time we took as many pains to protect them as they will put into stealing them. Apparently, Indians are particularly bad in this regard.

Cybersecurity firm Sophos set up a cloud server honeypot in Mumbai, a fake stash with possible data trove that would tempt hackers to steal it. Apparently, the password various hackers tried the most was '123456', because that's what most people use when they're too lazy to set a decent password.

In fact, that particular one was tried 1,376 times, given that it's the most popular password in Mumbai and the world.

So really, if you plan on keeping your data to yourself, maybe stay away from these few terrible password ideas.