Your complete guide to password safety
We reveal the best password managers and how to make the most of them so that your online accounts will never be breached again
We all know the cardinal rules for creating safe, ironclad passwords. Don’t use guessable words like ‘password’ and simple combinations like ‘1234’. Mix it up with upper-case and lower-case letters. Throw in numbers and punctuation marks. Make the password random. And don’t use the same password twice. The trouble is that few of us practice what the experts preach because you’d have to be some kind of genius to recall your passwords if you followed their guidelines to the letter.
Password managers, however, make it much easier to create and use the kind of passwords that would thwart even the most dedicated of hackers. We’ve put a few of the most popular ones to the test, revealing our top three. And for our winning password manager, we’ll provide a deep dive so you’ll become a dab hand at importing your existing accounts, generating unhackable passwords, sorting them into folders, and testing your passwords so you’ll know which are most at risk of being hacked.
But a good password manager is just the first step in keeping unwanted intruders locked out of your online accounts. There’s a second step. In fact it’s called two-step verification. It’s offered by many online services – particularly banks – and requires you to enter your password and a PIN code (usually sent to you via text message) whenever you try to log in. It’s a great extra layer of security that we recommend you use where it’s available.
But therein lies the problem – if you take the time to set up two-step verification on all your accounts that offer it (be that Google, Facebook, Amazon and so on), then you’ll very quickly lose track of which accounts you’ve enabled it on, how the PIN code is sent (mobile phone or landline) and how you can still gain access to that account even if your phone has no signal (if, for example, you’re travelling outside the EU and don’t want to risk an outrageous phone bill). That’s why we’ll explain how to use an app to manage two-step verification on your behalf.
So read on as we explain how to overhaul your password security, starting with a new password manager.