<page xmlns="http://projectmallard.org/1.0/" type="topic" style="tip" id="user-goodpassword" xml:lang="kn">

  <info>

    <link type="guide" xref="user-accounts#passwords"/>

    <revision pkgversion="3.8.0" date="2013-03-09" status="candidate"/>

    <revision pkgversion="3.13.92" date="2014-09-22" status="candidate"/>

    <revision pkgversion="3.18" date="2015-09-28" status="final"/>

    <credit type="author">

      <name>GNOME Documentation Project</name>

      <email>gnome-doc-list@gnome.org</email>

    </credit>

    <credit type="author">

      <name>Phil Bull</name>

      <email>philbull@gmail.com</email>

    </credit>

    <credit type="author">

      <name>Tiffany Antopolski</name>

      <email>tiffany.antopolski@gmail.com</email>

    </credit>

    <credit type="editor">

      <name>Michael Hill</name>

      <email>mdhillca@gmail.com</email>

    </credit>

    <include xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude" href="legal.xml"/>

    <desc>Use longer, more complicated passwords.</desc>

  </info>

  <title>Choose a secure password</title>

  <note style="important">

    
Make your passwords easy enough for you to remember, but very difficult

    for others (including computer programs) to guess.

  </note>

  
Choosing a good password will help to keep your computer safe. If your

  password is easy to guess, someone may figure it out and gain access to your

  personal information.

  
People could even use computers to systematically try to guess your

  password, so even one that would be difficult for a human to guess might be

  extremely easy for a computer program to crack. Here are some tips for

  choosing a good password:

  <list>

    <item>

      
Use a mixture of upper-case and lower-case letters, numbers, symbols

      and spaces in the password. This makes it more difficult to guess; there

      are more symbols from which to choose, meaning more possible passwords

      that someone would have to check when trying to guess yours.

      <note>

        
A good method for choosing a password is to take the first letter of

        each word in a phrase that you can remember. The phrase could be the

        name of a movie, a book, a song or an album. For example, “Flatland: A

        Romance of Many Dimensions” would become F:ARoMD or faromd or f:

        aromd.

      </note>

    </item>

    <item>

      
Make your password as long as possible. The more characters it

      contains, the longer it should take for a person or computer to guess

      it.

    </item>

    <item>

      
Do not use any words that appear in a standard dictionary in any

      language. Password crackers will try these first. The most common

      password is “password” — people can guess passwords like this very

      quickly!

    </item>

    <item>

      
Do not use any personal information such as a date, license plate

      number, or any family member’s name.

    </item>

    <item>

      
Do not use any nouns.

    </item>

    <item>

      
Choose a password that can be typed quickly, to decrease the chances

      of someone being able to make out what you have typed if they happen to

      be watching you.

      <note style="tip">

        
Never write your passwords down anywhere. They can be easily

        found!

      </note>

    </item>

    <item>

      
Use different passwords for different things.

    </item>

    <item>

      
Use different passwords for different accounts.

      
If you use the same password for all of your accounts, anyone who

      guesses it will be able to access all of your accounts immediately.

      
It can be difficult to remember lots of passwords, however. Though not

      as secure as using a different passwords for everything, it may be easier

      to use the same one for things that do not matter (like websites), and

      different ones for important things (like your online banking account and

      your email).

   </item>

   <item>

     
Change your passwords regularly.

   </item>

  </list>

</page>