Having a secure password is the key to keeping yourself safe when doing any business online. While there is no way to guarantee that you won’t get hacked, there are ways to keep yourself safe.

Here are five important things to keep in mind when selecting a password:

  1. Choose a password that has no relation to you or your family. Use a combination of upper and lower case letters, as well as numbers, and symbols. (ex. Ha.6*_K&2)
  1. Never use the same password more than once. It would be rather easy for a hacker to steal one password from you and search accounts attached to your name or email address. If all your passwords are the same they now have access to all your accounts.
  1. Security questions are common in login verification. Never use information that could be easily attainable online, an example would be your high school or first job. It might be better to instead use a word or phrase that has no relation to the question or to yourself or password.
  1. Always log off after every session, don’t just close the window or quit the program, log off. Closing a window or quitting a program doesn’t guarantee that you are logged out, which will leave you vulnerable to anyone getting into your system.
  1. A password manager might be a good solution for those that have several accounts.   A password manager will usually have a password generator; this would guarantee that your password has no relation to you. Just make sure you create a secure password for the password manager. Here are a couple of my favorite password managers: 1Password and Lastpass.