Tips to set strong passwords

A password is a secret word or set of characters that is used for user authentication to prove identity. The password can be commonly found in an on line account password or ATM PIN number or file password.

Generally we need passwords to protect the confidential or personal information that has to be kept secret from others. So it is very important to set the password unique and hard to prevent it from being hacked.

The following are ten tips to choose the strong password.

1. "password1", "123456", "qwerty", "master", "1111111", "abc123" etc. According to a report, these passwords are some of the worst kept secrets globally. So, avoid using them.
2. Make sure that the password should contain at least 8 characters.
3. Do not use common dictionary words. It is vulnerable to Dictionary attacks.
4. Use the combination of Upper case and lower case letters and numbers. It is good to include some special characters also.
5. Try to avoid setting password with your details directly like using your spouse or children name or the city you live or mobile phone number.
6. Use symbols/special characters for replacement of normal characters.Apply Upper case to every alternate letter in the password. Like i as "!", a as "@", s as "$". On applying above criteria, wikipedia to be chosen as "W!K!PeD!@"
7. Use the letters of the word in the reverse order to make it stronger. i.e., wikipedia becomes"aidepikiw".
8. Intentionally leaves some spaces and wrong spellings in the passwords which makes your password least guessable.
9. While creating a new password, avoid using the combination of old password. eg. Password1, Password2, Password3..
10. Relate your password to a favourite hobby or sport. For example, I love to play cricket as !lOvEtOpL@yCr!CkeT.

After choosing a good password, check the password strength through the following websites:
          http://www.passwordmeter.com/
          http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/security/

Most useful Chrome plugins

Chrome is world's most popular web browser. It is a freeware browser developed by Google. It became very popular due to its higher performance on speed, stability, User Interface and safety over the other browsers. And availability of plenty of extensions has also made most of the users to be attracted to using Chrome.

Some of the most useful plug ins for Chrome are listed below.

• Google Dictionary by Google  This extension fetches the definition of the any selected word in the web page and displays in a pop-up screen. To get the meaning of any word, just double click (left mouse button) on the particular word as shown in below fig. This can be downloaded from here.

• Readability  This extension provides a better way to read online by turning any web page into a comfortable reading view in the web browser. It offers a nice reading experience with many options like "Read Now"- which will disable surrounding web page noise and "Send to Kindle" - to send any web page to your Kindle in a comfortable reading view and many more. It can be downloaded freely from here.
• Stay Focused  We spent most of the time in front of computer and thought of doing work. But we might end up with social networking sites, gaming sites or any other sites without doing any work. This extension  helps to stay focused on work by restricting the amount of time we can spend on time-wasting websites. Once your allotted time has been used up, the sites you have blocked will be inaccessible for the rest of the day. It has configuration to block sub domain or part of specific page and many more. The below figure just displays the configuration window looks like. It is available for free here. 

• Awesome Screenshot  Unlike normal screen shot which captures only the image/text that is visible on screen, this extension will capture entire web page including content comes after the scrolling (which is not visible unless scrolled). It also provides annotation with rectangles, lines and circles. It is available here.
  

  

• Web of Trust  It helps to find trusty websites based on the experience and rating of millions of users. Third-party sources are also used to warn about malware and other technical threats. You will see a green, yellow or red icon next to search results when you search or referring any URL in any of the sites. We can make the best out of browsing and avoid untrustworthy links. It is available here. 

• Tabs Expose  It helps you manage your tabs by providing thumbnail previews of the tabs you have opened to help you quickly locate the tab you want to switch to or close tabs you don't want. It is very useful when you fed with many number of tabs. It can be downloaded for free from here.

Also See: Top add ons for Internet Explorer

Disclaimer: All the extensions above mentioned are just reviewed and this blog won't be responsible for any damages caused due to use of these extensions.

Top add ons for Internet Explorer

About Internet Explorer:  Internet Explorer is one of the widely used browser across the world. It's a belief that it doesn't provide much add-ons as compared to its rivals Firefox and Chrome. Even IE has got some fine plug-ins which are very useful.

All the plugins for IE reside at the Internet Explorer Add-ons Gallery. Search option is also provided to look for the desired plugin from the available list. Most of these will be compatible with IE versions of 6, 7, 8 and 9. But for the best result of the plugin the latest version of Internet Explorer is required.

Here are some of the most useful plug ins.

• PasswordWiz This will really help when you  have forgotten user names and passwords to your online accounts. It remembers, stores the information and automatically logs you in all your web accounts, with just one-click directly from the IE toolbar. And it is secure too, by its complex military encryption algorithm. It is available here.
• Define with Wikipedia It will open the corresponding search result page from Wikipedia for the highlighted text in the page as shown in the below figure. And is available here.

• BugMeNot The very useful Add-on for all those websites where you really don't want to register. Login with BugMeNot, and it will give anonymous user name and password to sign you into any major site on the web. That means, it gives the sans registration account for accessing the websites. It simply bypasses the registration to the site by clicking on the Right click of mouse and selecting "Login using BugMeNot" as shown in below figure. It is available here.

• Share on Facebook It allows to share the link, web page or any selected item to the facebook. It can be done by the option Share on facebook provided in All Accelerators (which appears on Right mouse click) as shown below.  It is available here.
  
  
  

• Open Last Closed Tab  This add-on enable us to resurrect any tab that has been opened and closed during the current browsing session. This can be used even in the case of accidentally closing the tabs. It is available here.

Also See: Most useful Chrome plugins

Check the compatibility of the browser before installing the add-ons, as some may work only in the latest version of Internet Explorer.

Disclaimer: All the extensions above mentioned are just reviewed and this blog won't be responsible for any damages caused due to use of these extensions.