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Creating a Strong Password

Many years ago, my eBay account was hacked and I received a notice via email that someone had posted a classic motorcycle for sale on my account with a ridiculously low price! Yikes! This was not good! With just a few headaches, time spent and crazy twists, I was finally able to get the listing removed, fees removed and my passwords changed.  I learned quickly that a strong password was critical. But was it really that strong? From Steve Gibson's website check out the following: 



"Which of the following two passwords is stronger,
more secure, and more difficult to crack?"
D0g.....................

PrXyc.N(n4k77#L!eVdAfp9



According to Steve, the first one is better! It is one character longer and contains uppercase, lowercase, a number and special characters. This secure website, called Haystack, can help you check out potential passwords.  It is pretty comforting when you see that with a "Massive Cracking Array Scenario: (Assuming one hundred trillion guesses per second)" that your new password would potentially take 1.74 centuries to hack, hypothetically speaking, of course.  Check out Haystack at  https://www.grc.com/haystack.htm

Did you know? 
 The #1 most commonly used password is “123456”, and the 4th most common is “Password.” 
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