Tips for strong. sturdy password

Online security is a big deal and keeping your password safe, strong and sturdy is the mantra for survival in this online age. You can not afford to be careless about password anymore. Whether its the password of your email account, your social networking site account or your bank account, you have to be very wise while setting you r password. Any ignorance here can have a very disastrous outcome.

Here are a few tips that will help you to choose your password wisely :)

The most secure types of passwords have three specific qualities:
1)They are at least 8 characters long.
2)They must have a mix of lowercase and uppercase alphabets. (like KuMaRdEePaM).
3)They must include numbers and special characters (like @$^!23423)

Three thumb rule to follow in order to keep

your password secure are
1)Don't keep your password as something that can be easily guessed (like words that can be found in a dictionary, dates, names etc.)
2)Don't keep the passwords and usernames for sensitive information (like bank accounts and email ids) and for non-sensitive information (like online greeting sites, online forums etc.)
3)Make sure that your password is safe against hacking by including special characters and change it at least once every month.

Mostly all the advanced applications like gmail offers password's strength checker to help you select a strong password.
You can visit this link to check strength of a password www.microsoft.com/protect/yourself/password/checker.mspx

This article also answers these following questions:
How to set a strong, sturdy password ?
What is the tool for checking the strength of a password ?