Worried About Your Weak Passwords? Here's How to Fix Them

Look we get it.

Remembering dozens and dozens of different passwords

for different sites is next to impossible.

But that doesn't mean you should just reuse your passwords

because then you're asking for trouble.

My name is Brian Barrett.

I'm Wired's news editor

and this is your guide to staying safe on the internet.

The simplest solution to your password problems,

get a password manager.

There's lots of them out there.

They generate extremely complex passwords for you

so you don't have to remember all of them

so go do that right now

but if for some reason you don't want

to put all of your passwords into one program

that's also fine, no judgment here.

At least start making the passwords

you make up on your own stronger.

So first, worry less about making them complicated

then making them long like at least 16 characters.

That beats putting in a bunch of weird symbols in there.

Second, speaking of weird keep it strange.

You're a creative person all right?

Don't use sports teams or movie titles especially Star Wars.

Everybody uses Star Wars.

Third, give your special characters some space.

Bunching up a bunch of exclamation points or at symbols

at the beginning or the end makes your password

too easy to crack because that's what everybody else does.

It's too predictable.

Lastly, whenever it's available

use the services two-factor authentication.

You can do that for Google, for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram

basically every major web service has this now.

With two-factor when you log in from a new device

you get a text message with a special code

that you need to get into your account

in addition to your password.

It's an extra piece of info that keeps hackers out

even if they somehow now what the password is.

So there you go, simple steps for better passwords

and seriously just no password123.

Not even password1234 or 5 or 6 or any- just don't

and you'll be fine.