Current File : //usr/share/help/C/gnome-help/user-goodpassword.page
<page xmlns="http://projectmallard.org/1.0/"
type="topic" style="tip"
id="user-goodpassword">
<info>
<link type="guide" xref="user-accounts#passwords"/>
<revision pkgversion="3.8.0" date="2013-03-09" status="candidate"/>
<revision pkgversion="3.13.92" date="2014-09-22" status="candidate"/>
<revision pkgversion="3.18" date="2015-09-28" status="final"/>
<credit type="author">
<name>GNOME Documentation Project</name>
<email>gnome-doc-list@gnome.org</email>
</credit>
<credit type="author">
<name>Phil Bull</name>
<email>philbull@gmail.com</email>
</credit>
<credit type="author">
<name>Tiffany Antopolski</name>
<email>tiffany.antopolski@gmail.com</email>
</credit>
<credit type="editor">
<name>Michael Hill</name>
<email>mdhillca@gmail.com</email>
</credit>
<include href="legal.xml" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"/>
<desc>Use longer, more complicated passwords.</desc>
</info>
<title>Choose a secure password</title>
<note style="important">
<p>Make your passwords easy enough for you to remember, but very difficult
for others (including computer programs) to guess.</p>
</note>
<p>Choosing a good password will help to keep your computer safe. If your
password is easy to guess, someone may figure it out and gain access to your
personal information.</p>
<p>People could even use computers to systematically try to guess your
password, so even one that would be difficult for a human to guess might be
extremely easy for a computer program to crack. Here are some tips for
choosing a good password:</p>
<list>
<item>
<p>Use a mixture of upper-case and lower-case letters, numbers, symbols
and spaces in the password. This makes it more difficult to guess; there
are more symbols from which to choose, meaning more possible passwords
that someone would have to check when trying to guess yours.</p>
<note>
<p>A good method for choosing a password is to take the first letter of
each word in a phrase that you can remember. The phrase could be the
name of a movie, a book, a song or an album. For example, “Flatland: A
Romance of Many Dimensions” would become F:ARoMD or faromd or f:
aromd.</p>
</note>
</item>
<item>
<p>Make your password as long as possible. The more characters it
contains, the longer it should take for a person or computer to guess
it.</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Do not use any words that appear in a standard dictionary in any
language. Password crackers will try these first. The most common
password is “password” — people can guess passwords like this very
quickly!</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Do not use any personal information such as a date, license plate
number, or any family member’s name.</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Do not use any nouns.</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Choose a password that can be typed quickly, to decrease the chances
of someone being able to make out what you have typed if they happen to
be watching you.</p>
<note style="tip">
<p>Never write your passwords down anywhere. They can be easily
found!</p>
</note>
</item>
<item>
<p>Use different passwords for different things.</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Use different passwords for different accounts.</p>
<p>If you use the same password for all of your accounts, anyone who
guesses it will be able to access all of your accounts immediately.</p>
<p>It can be difficult to remember lots of passwords, however. Though not
as secure as using a different passwords for everything, it may be easier
to use the same one for things that do not matter (like websites), and
different ones for important things (like your online banking account and
your email).</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Change your passwords regularly.</p>
</item>
</list>
</page>
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