Is it true that it's considered unsafe to have full words as your password on e-mail accounts?

Question

EX: Most people say that passwords like this:

w8ytae5h

is more effective than

crayola64.

How true is that?

Answer 1

well yes and no

the password like "paul" or "ginger" isn't safe, because password crackers go through the dicionary first. then they tack numbers at the begining and end of them

using the ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 . / , < > ? charecters in the word makes it very hard to crack, even if the person knows you well

Answer 2

It's completely true. A standard hacker tool is the "dictionary attack," where a long list of commonly used passwords is checked to see if you were foolish enough to use a well known example, such as crayola. Adding numbers to it - crayola64 - makes it a little more secure, but not that much.

Basically, a dictionary attack with 10 or 20 thousand words can break into accounts that use words for passwords.

If you use a random string of letters and numbers that is 8 chatacters long, even if you only use lower case, there are 36 to the 8th power possible combinations to check. Rather than breaking in after checking a few thousand words, a brute force attack would have to try a pretty good portion of 2,821,109,907,456 possibilities to get a match - they hacker is likely to need more than 1 trillion attempts to guess it. If each attempt takes .01 seconds (they probably take longer, but for the sake of argument...) a full word password can be broken in a few minutes, but a random 8 character password will take millennia of guessing - so a brute force attempt is useless.

Answer 3

Hi, yeah thats true its always better to use random characters and symbols like "`", "*", "_" as well.

The reason is cause the first attempt to break in to an account is a brute force attack in which all the words that exist r used in different combinations so guessing of the right words would easily break in to it.

Now if u random odd letters and words, I have read with some combinations it could take around 80 years for a successful brute force attack and no hacker would wait that long.

I hope u understood what I was trying to explain :)

Take care!

Answer 4

It's very true.

The password on the top is what we would consider a 'stronger' password.  A method that hackers typically use to brute force their way through a login is to repeatedly try to log on using words from a dictionary, or a list of common terms, for the password.

Crayola64 is more likely to be in this list than 'w8ytae5h'.

Another reason is that people who know anything about you might be able to guess your password if you're say, crazy about Crayola crayons.

To make your password even stronger, use special characters like # $ % ^ & in your password if the site allows it.

The professionals also change their passwords on a regular basis.  If you're taking online security / privacy very seriously, I suggest you do as well.

Answer 5

because people like to use Brute Force attacks when trying to get passwords....and w8tae5h would most liekly not be on the list of things to put in...as crayola64 would be.....the more random your password..the better..

generic recs

2lower

2upper

2special

2numbers

min 9 characters long