How safe is my password?

                                  How safe is my password?

All too often, passwords are exposed. Instagram, Pinterest, Yahoo, and even Google accounts were compromised, rendering millions of online accounts vulnerable to third-party hacks. And that was only the most recent security breach.

Passwords especially those not supported by two-step verifications  are your last lines of defense against prying eyes. This guide will help you understand how those passwords are exposed, and what you can do to keep them locked down.

How are passwords exposed?

Before we dive into the how-tos of creating secure passwords, it's important to understand why you need a supersecure password to begin with. After all, you might be thinking, "Who would want to hack little old me?"There are a few ways your account passwords can be compromised.

1. Someone's out to get you. Enemies you've created, exes from your past, a nosy mother, an intrusive spouse -- there are many people who might want to take a peek into your personal life. If these people know you well, they might be able to guess your e-mail password and use password recovery options to access your other accounts. (Can you tell I'm speaking from experience?) 
2. You become the victim of a brute-force attack.Whether a hacker attempts to access a group of user accounts or just yours, brute-force attacks are the go-to strategy for cracking passwords. These attacks work by systematically checking all possible passphrases until the correct one is found. If the hacker already has an idea of the guidelines used to create the password, this process becomes easier to execute. 
3. There's a data breach. Every few months it seems another huge companies  reports a hacking resulting in millions of people's account information being compromised. And with the recent Heart bleed bug, many popular websites were affected directly.

What makes a good password?

Although data breaches are out of your control, it's still imperative to create passwords that can withstand brute-force attacks and relentless frenemies. Avoiding both types of attacks is dependent on the complexity of your password.

Ideally, each of your passwords would be at least 16 characters, and contain a combination of numbers, symbols, uppercase letters, lowercase letters, and spaces. The password would be free of repetition, dictionary words, usernames, pronouns, IDs, and any other predefined number or letter sequences. 

Ideal passwords, however, are a huge inconvenience. How can we be expected to remember 80-bit (12-character) passwords for each of our various Web accounts? That's where many people turn to password managers like LastPass  and Password.