People,,wake up !

When internet has become something tats inseparable from our lives, do not forget that your privacy is at stake too. Password is the soul of Internet security. Unfortunately many are not aware of its importance.

The recent hack of the RockYou website has exposed around 30 million passwords. Remember it is none other than you who is responsible for your account getting hacked. You never know the extent upto which your passwords could be used without your knowledge. So why give hackers the chance. Its high time you wake up.

Software companies ensure high password security because they could not afford the loss if confidential data is leaked. And so should you. The following is for non-IT background people or who is not aware how vulnerable weak passwords are.

Ensure your password achieves all these:

1. Keep changing your password regularly (say once in a month or two)

2. Dont keep single password for all your accounts (It becomes very easy for the hacker) just

because it is easy to remember. You know wat,, I'l tell you what I do. I have around 20

accounts (including the social networking and bookmarking sites) and remembering all the passwords would drive me crazy. Heres wat you can do- write down the passwords against the respective account name in a notepad file. Encrypt/Lock the file with a "not easy to crack" password and save it in your hard disk. You are done!! you get to hav a record of all your passwords and also keep it unreadable to others.

3. Do not share your passwords. You know what it leads to. And do not let others to easily guess what your password would be. (Keep weird names but not vulnerable ones.. That helps)

4. Including capital letters, special characters(+,_,@,#,$,%,^,&,*), numbers in between makes

the password hard to get cracked.

5. Most important of all, dont fall for any tricks played by hackers through anonymous mails asking for your password although they claim it is for their own benefit.

I think I have covered almost all the points to be taken care of.

So after the 'RockYou hack' issue a study has come up with a list of most commonly used/vulnerable passwords that invites hackers to do their job very easily.

Have a look @ them

1. 123456

2.Password

3.RockYou

4.iloveyou

5.qwerty

6. abc123

7. 123456789

8. princess

9. (your first name)

10. monkey

If your password is one of these/ if you think yours is easy to track down, change it right away.

Protect your data and stay safe from hackers.