Is Your Password Safe?

Think your password is safe? Apparently 6.5 million Linkedin and 1.5 million eHarmoney members did. Check your Linkedin password at LastPass/Linkedin. And check you eHarmoney password at LastPass/eHarmoney.
If you think your password is unique and clever, you might want to rethink that. Security firm Rapid7 has revealed the top passwords stolen from this week's Linkedin security breach. There were hundreds of duplicates and patterns associated with the stolen passwords.
"Link" was the number one hacked password, according to Rapid7. Work, job, god, angel, jesus, 1234, 12345 all made the list of stolen passwords. So, if you have a password associated with any of these words or numbers, I would advise to change your password to something more unique. 
Here's a trick to a strong, unique password on every web site you visit -- and you'll never forget it.

Step 1: Start with a word that you can remember.

Step 2: Replace the vowels in your word with numbers or symbols.

Replace the vowels with numbers and symbols that look similar to the letter they're replacing:
The letter a becomes the symbol @ because it looks like an a.
The letter A becomes the number 4 because a four looks like a capital A.
The letter i becomes the number 1, because a one looks like an i.
The letter e becomes the number 3 because a three looks like a backwards capital E.
The letter o becomes 0 (zero)
The letter s with the number 5. It may not be a vowel, but since the two look so similar, it just seemed to make sense.


Step 3: To get a unique password for each site. Incorporate part of the web site name into the password. For example use g or go for your google account.