I Forgot My Password

In this day and age, just about every service or every platform there is needs a registration for us to be able to use and utilize them. And aside from a valid username or a mobile number the ever so constant field or information requested is the password.

Passwords help us secure our accounts and other information. Passwords are not only use to identify and verify a certain account in a registration but they are also use to safeguard files, documents and others. We also use passwords to protect our phones from unauthorized access.

What's a Password?

A password is usually a string combination that is commonly used with a username to authenticate and verify a registered user account. Other terms that are synonymous or related to passwords are passcode, passkey, passphrase. Passphrase is often used when the password required is multiple words. Password is also referred to as Personal Identification Number or PIN when the character set allowed for the are numbers.

The usage however of passwords, passphrase and PIN are observably different. PIN's for example are mainly used in machines like automated teller machines or ATM. They are also often used in screen lock features of mobile devices. In a more technical view, PINs are often used to conserve memory allocations in database because fetching integer values are more efficient than fetching strings.

Your seed phrases for wallets can be considered as a utilization of passphrase. Because in theory, passphrases can be more secured than a password. Guessing a 12 word series in the correct order yields more probable results than guessing an average 6-8 character word. (Statistician can disprove or back me up on this, I didn't do the math.)

Secure Password

Since passwords are used for our accounts' and our data security they should really be secured, and as in secured. Don't use a single word that is relevant to you and is easily guessed. As a matter of fact don't use a recognizable word at all. And stop using the word "incorrect" as your password.

Most security systems allow and/or required a level of complexity for a password. In which case, you can use letters from the alphabets, numbers and special characters in combination with each other to form an even more complex string.

In practice people in the tech industries like to interchange letters with numbers to form a word. For example, we spell password as p@$sw0rd. Usually, systems also treat lowercase and uppercase letters as different characters which could also add to the degree of the difficulty of the password.

Also to add complexity to the password, you can add more characters to it. The more characters there are in your password, the harder it is to crack and the longer the time it needs to be compromised.

Passwords also need to be changed regularly so they keep their integrity, security and effectivity. Ideally password must be change in time when you change your toothbrush, or 3 months, whatever comes first.

Securing Your Password

You have a secure password, but how are you securing them? That's a bit confusing but you read that right, you should secure your secure passwords, you should be safekeeping your passwords so you won't lose them or worse, have them stolen.

Ideally, passwords should not be written or typed down anywhere. They should only exist in the users mind. But in today's technological landscape where you almost always need a registration and a user account, it is harder and harder to keep track of all the passwords we use, so we tend to abuse the "forgot password" feature and even worse, we tend to use identical passwords across different platforms.

There are applications that could help us keep track of all our passwords and keep them organized and secured. Password managers are tools that we could use to accomplish this. Password managers like LastPass and Bitwarden offer free versions for everyone to try. Also it's better to use offline managers so you are sure that your passwords are not sent out to any servers on the internet.

Conclusion

Passwords are vital to security of our information so prioritizing their security should also be on top of everything.

Use a complex password combination consisting of alphabets, numbers and special characters. Don't use a password that is closely related or relevant to you. Use different passwords for different services, websites, and systems. Never write down your passwords or share them to anybody. Use password managers if possible. Regularly change your passwords.

And with that, may your accounts be always safe.

Hey there!

Thank you for visiting once again. I hope that you find this article a bit helpful if not informative. Always be cautious with your passwords. Also pardon my typos and other errors, still having a hard time typing from a small mobile phone...

As always,

Cheers!!!

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