If you spend a good amount of time online, and if you have a business that is partially or wholly based online, you likely have a need to use dozens and dozens of websites or web apps that require you to login in order to use them.

If you’re like most people, you probably use the same password everywhere, for every site you need to login to, including the admin side of your own website.

That one password that you’re probably using is also probably short and easy to remember, which, unfortunately, also makes it very easy for hackers (or their password cracking programs) to figure out.

If you use the same simple, easy-to-remember password everywhere you go on the web, you’re putting yourself, and all of your private, personal data, in a very risky situation.

If a hacker figures out your password for one app or website that you use, like your email account, they have half of what they need to login to the admin side of your website, such as a wordpress website.

That’s not a good thing.

One of the best things you can do to protect yourself online and keep all of your online accounts safe and secure (such as your online banking website, email account, business website, webhost account, and so on) is to always create super strong passwords, and use a different one for every website that you need to log into.

By “super strong” I mean long, ugly, and a pain in the butt to remember. A super strong password should be longer than 16 characters. It should not have any words that are in the dictionary, and it should have upper and lowercase letters, symbols, and numbers.

This is an example of a super strong password: #$kK3o;?Asc#m3op8A

This is an example of a weak password that could be easily cracked by a hacker: sunshine77

Here’s a really easy way to test how strong your password is. Go to this website:

http://howsecureismypassword.net/

Then paste in your password. If you happen to use the same password everywhere you go on the web, go ahead and enter the password you always use into the big password field on that page above.

As soon as you enter it, you’ll see some notes about your password below it.

The first thing you’ll see is how long it would take a PC to crack your password.

For the super strong password above, it would take 3 quintillion years to crack. And I’m not making that up. Copy and paste that password above into the password strength checking tool on that page and see for yourself.

3 quintnillion years is a 3 with 18 zeros. That’s a crazy long time. The earth actually won’t even be here 3 quintillion years from now (due to the fact that the sun will expand into a Red Giant star and burn up the Earth in about 5 billion years from now. And I’m not making that up either 😉

In other words, that first super strong password is very secure.

As for the second one, which is sunshine77, it would only take 10 days for a hacker to crack that. In other words, it’s not very strong at all.

On the password strength checking page, below the display of the length of time it would take to crack your password, if your password isn’t very safe, you’ll see some notes about how to make it stronger.

The big take away here is this: wherever you go on the web that requires you to login, if you want to keep others from accessing the place where you’re logging into, use a long, ugly, hard to remember password that’s over 16 characters long, has upper and lower case letters, numbers, and symbols, and that doesn’t have any words from the dictionary in it.

Now, doing this presents a potential pain in the butt into your daily online life: how are you supposed to remember even one of those super strong passwords, much less a different one for every website you need to log into regularly?

Enter a type of software called a “password manager.” This, my friends, will save you in many ways, while keeping you very safe online.

My favorite password manager, which works on Macs, PC’s, iphones, ipads, and Android phones, is called 1Password. I use it everyday, at least 10 times a day. It’s a lifesaver. Seriously.

What a password manager like 1Password does is this:

1) It stores all of your passwords for every website you need to login to.

2) When you come to a website that you need to login to often, as long as you’ve saved your login information for that site in 1Password, you can use 1Password to login to the site with one click in your browser. It will automatically fill in your username or email address and password in the login form, then click on the login button for you. Easy peasy. No need to remember long ugly passwords. No need to remember any login credentials at all…1password remembers them for you.

3) You can create those super strong type of passwords for new sites that you need to login to, or old ones that you want to change the password for, using a built in password generator. Again, it’s very quick and easy. One click and it creates a beautiful, long, ugly, super strong password for you that you can use anywhere you want to. Lickety split.

1Password does a few other cool things as well, and I highly recommend that you check it out and buy it. It’s money well spent if you spend a lot of time online and want to keep your things safe on the interwebs.

Hope this helps a bit! Get out there and create some super strong, beautiful-ugly passwords wherever you go on the web!