Lesson Objective: You will learn how to keep your online information more secure by using and maintaining strong passwords. You will learn about the principles of strong password design and the potential problems of password sharing. You will also learn how to keep your passwords safe and how to take steps to prevent unauthorized access to their accounts.

ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS

•  To what extent can passwords keep your information secure online?

Password basics

We often don’t think a lot about the passwords we use for websites, apps and services. However, how good your passwords are determines how secure your information will be.

A strong password helps protect your information. While having a strong password doesn’t guarantee that your account won’t be hacked, having a weak password makes it much easier for someone to access your information

Strong passwords

There are two approaches to creating strong passwords. The first is to follow a “password recipe” like this one on the board. Using such a recipe encourages you to include harder to-guess elements in a text/numerical password, making the password itself harder to guess. The drawback of this approach is that it makes passwords harder to remember

Another approach to creating strong passwords is connected to password length. As password strength is related to password length, using a string of four or more unrelated words makes passwords much harder to guess for humans and “Brute force” attacks. This method has the added benefit of resulting in passwords that are easier to remember than the recipe method. Lastly, one can use a combination of these two methods by coming up with a string of four or more unrelated words, also including symbols and numbers. The goal of these different methods is the same: developing passwords that are unique and difficult for other people to guess

Some websites use a system called multi-factor (or two-factor) authentication to verify your identity. These websites often use text messaging, an app or email to send a one-off code that must be entered along with the password. This method can make your accounts much safer by adding an extra layer of security that is far more difficult to break. For instance, to log in to your account, a person must have your password and access to the app, device or email address associated with the account