If a cyber criminal targets you, how strong are your passwords?
A recent study shows 83 percent of Americans are using weak passwords.
"People get lazy and they make easy passwords."
And hackers are taking advantage.
Thomas Russell with National Cybersecurity Center says, "People can use password crackers and they can get it within just minutes or even hours because as someone is trying to hack something else he's got a machine working that's checking the passwords of several people at the same time."
Thomas Russell at the National Cybersecurity Center says stolen lackluster passwords are making cyber criminals rich.
"Those things are sold over, and over, and over again. People make a living off of selling other people's information," Russell says.
66% use same passwords too short and lack special characters.
Google believes 66 percent of us use the same password for all our accounts.
Hackers are most likely to uncover passwords that are too short and lack special characters.
Google suggests we make sure to have a good back-up email and phone number to reset any accounts that are compromised.
Justin Burr with Google Technology Expert says, "If you get locked out of your other account it can give you information to get back in there because if that other account is compromised and somebody does have access to that sending information to that account doesn't do a lot of good."
Cyber experts say we should make our passwords longer, start by using three words and combining it with special characters.
That way, if you're one of the 10 million Disney+ subscribers who don't want someone taking over your account, or you just want to keep hackers off your social media accounts, you'll have a password that stands up to cyber attacks.
One thing most people don't realize is sometimes you can use a space or the space bar as one of your password characters.
If you want some ideasto improve your password, here is a strategy used by Thomas Russell at the National Cybersecurity Center: National Cybersecurity Center Passwords Made Easy
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