When was the last time you changed the password for your email account? Or for your social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook? Or for those websites that you have registered for to keep up with news, shop online or pay utility bills? If you can’t remember the last time you changed your password, it’s time to do it NOW. According to Norton Cybercrime Report 2012, a significant number of the cyber-crimes occurring globally or in India are either due to the absence of strong complex passwords or infrequent changing of passwords.
Norton, a global software security solutions provider, has found that 25 per cent of online users do not use complex passwords or change them infrequently. “Having a weak password is like keeping your door half-open for trespassers to enter without effort,” says David Hall, regional consumer product marketing manager, Asia Pacific. “One must change passwords as often as every week or twice a week.”
Cyber crimes are growing in alarming proportions, says Norton. About 80 online users in India are subjected to cyber crimes every minute causing a cumulative direct financial loss of approximately $8 billion during 2011-12. This means that more than 42 million of the total 120 million Internet users in India have been victims of online crimes.
Globally, the losses are pegged at $110 billion, with 18 adults victimised every second. Interestingly, social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, are the newest targets of cycle criminals, owing to the media’s growing popularity.
“Email accounts (both personal or professional) are repositories of information. And a weak password can let cyber criminals in easily. They can then use the vital information to access other sites, change passwords and lock you out of your own accounts,” explains Rajesh Chharia, president, Internet Service Providers Association of India.
While experts advocate frequent change of passwords, users may find it difficult to, first, create a complex password and, then, to remember it. What’s more challenging is the fact that most people patronise multiple sites and therefore need multiple passwords.
“Keeping a common password for a few or all sites is a common practice in India. But it may prove to be harmful in the long-run, particularly, if one doesn’t have the habit of changing passwords frequently,” warns Pavan Duggal, Supreme Court advocate (cyber law).
Experts say one option is to send your passwords to yourself in an email message so you can retrieve them wherever you are. Of course, you can’t put ‘passwords’ in the subject field!
Help is also at hand in the form of online password generators such as generate-password.com, onlinepasswordgenerator.com and passwordgenerator.com. These sites create random passwords based on a mixture of actual dictionary words, random letters, numbers and symbols. These sites (some of which are paid, the others free) generate passwords at a frequency specified by the user and offer an option to secure passwords for multiple sites.