Just recently I was reminded that it is important to back up files that you may have stored anywhere. And of course I learned this lesson the hard way. Another domain name that I run was hacked into and the page was trashed.

I made two mistakes on my side that allowed this to happen. I picked an easy username and easy password and I didn’t have a recent backup. Fortunately for me the page was very small, under 2Mb and most of the content was saved on my computer. It was only a matter then of a little redesign and uploading it.

Passwords – For this particular site I used a password that had some of the keywords of the site in it. Bad Idea! People with malicious intent can run programs that simply try plugging in different words from a dictionary to gain access. Here are some password hints to make it harder to do.

1. Use letters and numbers – Adding 0-9 exponentially adds more possibilities to go through as you add more characters to your password.
2. Don’t use whole words – The easiest way to get through passwords is to plug in words.
3. Don’t use the same password for multiple places – If someone figures out one password, what’s to stop them from trying it everywhere and messing up things for you all over?
4. Use acronyms – If you really like Triscuit crackers, your password might contain, ‘bwgwc’ standing for ‘Baked Whole Grain Wheat Crackers’ or you could use lyrics from a song, or take a saying.
5. Use harder acronyms – Instead of taking the first letter, you could make it harder by going for the second, third, or last. In our above example we would have ahrhr, koaec, or dents; however I wouldn’t recommend the last one that makes up an actual word.
6. Use feeling – If you can push letters in some sort of a pattern on the keyboard without even thinking about it, that could be a good start. For example if I roll my left hand right now I get asdf, and as long as I am using a qwerty keyboard, that action will always give me the same thing. I could go anywhere on the keyboard and punch in a pattern and not know the password, but have something hard to duplicate.

Combine the above tips to make the strongest password you possibly can! On Thursday I’ll have the second part of this ‘Remember not to forget’ set, backing up files.