With reports suggesting that millions of email accounts, primarily in Russia and including at least 5 million Gmail accounts, have been compromised, it might be a good time to change that password of yours.
The good news is that it does not appear at the moment that accounts in India are among the 10 million odd accounts, passwords of which have been leaked online.
However, we still advise you to change your password and activate two step authentication if case you think your mail contains information that could damage you financially or professionally.
You will find all details on how to activate two-step authentication for Gmail here. It comes with its own share of hassles, but prevents others and unauthorised devices from accessing you mail.
Endpoint protection solutions provider Kaspersky Lab has suggested these ways to make your passwords more secure.
According to them, here is what you must not do:
Use 1234 and asdfghj passwords
Use the same passwords for a number of various accounts
Use the same password for more than half a year
Write down your password at a place visible to everyone.
And here is what you must do
Initiate multifactor authentication (explained above)
Use tokens
Use long passwords
If you find it difficult to remember password, store them in an encrypted storage service like Last Pass, Dashlane or Norton Identity Safe.
If you ask me the best way to create a tough password that you will not forget is to use a phrase that is close to you.
Let us take the opening line of Robert Frost’s popular poem Road Not Taken.
TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood
Use first letter of the phrase to create a password: trdiayw, add you date of birth or some other numerals and cap one or two letters.
For instance: TrdiayW1947
If you want to make it stronger, add a special character. TrdiayW@1947
Now, who will guess that?