There are many ways to protect your computers and the private information on them. A common way used on personal computers and web sites is to require a login user name and password. In theory, those with the correct credentials get in, and everyone else is blocked. But like everything else computers help us to do, they have made password cracking easier. What used to be impossible can now be done in ever-shorter amounts of processing time. How strong are the passwords you use?

There are some helpful rules to follow when creating a password: use a mix of upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols. Use a password that is long enough to increase the difficulty level of cracking - every character you add multiplies the effort needed to crack it.

For the visually oriented, or the tinkerers among us, here is a useful tool to see how strong your passwords really are. 

The Password Meter

Enter a password and see how well it does. Then, by reading the hints on the Password Meter site, start adjusting your password to make it stronger. It's not hard to get all blue and green rows, indicating your password passes all the strength tests.

Using a password with a 100% score on the Password Meter doesn't guarantee that it will never be cracked, but it will improve your chances over the many who use a pet's name or a dictionary word, or the most common bad password of all, "123456"!