Excellent Password Creation
By: Barry E. Haimo, Esq.
November 15, 2013
Believe it or not, your estate probably includes digital assets. These are anything of value to you, such as passwords to important documents precious family photo albums and videos, social media accounts, email accounts and domains, etc. Some online accounts like Ebay, Amazon, Half.com, Paypal, Square and YouTube can generate revenue and carry a cash balance. In either case, if these assets have an intangible value to you, you want to ensure that access to all of these assets is both preserved and protected for future generations with excellent passwords and shared with your personal representative and/or trustees.
You also want to ensure that your passwords remain private and secure. For this reason, it’s a really good idea to change your passwords frequently, especially if they are weak. Today’s technology is powerful, and computers can swiftly cycle through millions of combinations in seconds. Most people are heavily invested in online resources, some of which generate revenue (YouTube , Ebay, Amazon, etc.) or have access to money (banks, credit cards,Paypal, Square, etc.). Other resources include access to email, documents (like Google Drive, Dropbox or Box), or personal items (pictures, videos, letters or files) stored on a local computer. It’s common to store your passwords on a spreadsheet and encrypt the spreadsheet. It goes without saying to write that password down and share it with your appointed fiduciaries. Similarly, the same logic applies to your computer where that spreadsheet is located if that is password protected too. These passwords are all vulnerable if they are not excellent so don’t wait until your passwords are hacked or worse.
In point of fact, I was recently redoing my passwords to ensure they are as complex as possible. I came across a few password strength checkers but this one (https://www-ssl.intel.com/content/www/us/en/forms/passwordwin.html) was the best, and it’s by Intel so that adds credibility. If your password is weak, it gives you great suggestions for how to improve it and how to use slight variations of existing ones rather than duplicating the same one, which can be dangerous. This can be especially helpful for remembering many of them for various accounts.
Really good passwords use combinations of:
- Numbers
- Lowercase letters
- Uppercase letters
- Symbols (!@#$%^&*()<>{}) *Note banks don’t often allow “$” in passwords
- Spaces (if permitted)
- Avoid words that are found in the dictionary (i.e. remove letters such as vowels)
- String words together
*Note banks don’t often allow “$” or spaces to be used in passwords so use other combinations to make them more secure. A lot of sites offer two step verification which I recommend. That usually means it will send a verification code via text or email to authenticate the person attempting to sign on.
Author:
Barry E. Haimo, Esq.
Haimo Law
Strategic Planning With Purpose
Email: barry@haimolaw.com
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