Do you find yourself entangled in a web of passwords? Well, you are not alone. Whether you want to buy a pair of shoes, withdraw money from your bank account or order food; you need to have a password to login to the individual websites. Life becomes even more complicated with complex passwords to remember-where you need to use a range of special characters, capital letters, small letters, numbers, and then change all these every few months while not repeating the combination you had used the last few times. Is it any wonder that too many people find it just too difficult to remember passwords?
An urban legend has it that the individual who is responsible for creating today's ultra-secure passwords, has actually backed out and said that he regrets what he has done.
It is unlikely that organizations that ask you to create complex password will change the format anytime soon. On an average, most people have to remember at least 15 to 20 passwords, to manage things such as their email accounts, social media platforms, bank accounts, accounts of other financial products, travel portals, ticketing portals, and their income tax website account.
The good news is that a set of experts believe that we are eventually going to move away from passwords to biometric-based identification. Your fingerprint and face will be enough to recognize you. However, till that happens, you need to stay sane while managing your passwords, without compromising your security. What are the options? Currently, there is no way of avoiding the web of complex passwords. Mint Money tells you how to navigate this web.
Use a story for your password
If you are an active online user, you know that remembering too many complex password is difficult. Experts say that you can ease the painful process of creating secure passwords by utilizing words or references that are gibberish to all the other people but not to you. "It is going to be difficult to remember all the alphanumericals with special character passwords. It is better to have some kind of picture story in your mind, which you will be able to remember. Just to give you an example, if I am using my email, I will have a picture story which talks about when I first created the login ID. It is much more easier to remember. I have used a picture story in my mind and given the first character of that particular word as password. It may sound very gibberish. But in my mind it makes complete sense because it is a picture story," said Altaf Halde, global business head, Network Intelligence, a company that looks into cyber security and works with banks, manufacturing companies and government agencies. Meanwhile, you can also use longer passwords, with say 15 characters. It becomes difficult to hack into a long password compared to one with only six or eight characters. For instance, instead of writing '@theworld1', a password like 'theworld@of1tennis' is likely to be more secure.
Multi-factor authentication
Most companies have started providing for multiple factors of authentication, such as one-time-passwords (OTPs) or asking you questions that only you can answer, after you key-in your password. If you have this option, do use it. For instance, Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd gives its customer an additional authentication option to login to their internet banking service. It helps you get an added layer of protection because even if anyone else tries to hack into your account through your password, there is still one more hurdle to cross before gaining full access to the account.
It won't make hacking impossible but yes, it will make it a little more difficult as the hacker would now have to gain access to multiple details. It will add to your inconvenience too in accessing your own account, but if the inconvenience is for your security, you should accept the trade-off.
Use a password manager
With having to remember so many passwords, just to be able to manage your day-to-day life, you are going to need help. Not just for gaming or social media, you need to remember passwords to manage your bank accounts, e-commerce websites and ticketing portals too. In this situation, many end up saving their password as drafts in their email or phones. Then there are those who use similar patterns or even the same password for all platforms.
However, this can make you even more vulnerable to fraud. "People are using same password across website or they use the same pattern. In this case, it becomes easy for fraudsters to obtain passwords. When a professional social media website got leaked, all the password hashes were available online. Now a fraudster could see what you are doing. A person can get your email address from anywhere and get access to the password online and if it was similar to the platform, it will be hacked. Once they get access, they can get your bank account details through your bank statements in your email. They could also get details from your PAN card such as date of birth to get access to bank statement," said Amit Jaju, partner and head of forensic technology, EY India. Experts say that instead of leaving traces of your passwords or using the same password, you should use password managers such as LastPass, KeePass or RoboForm. These applications let you manage passwords without having to remember them.
In arrangement with HT Syndication | MINT
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