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Password Security How to Create Strong Passwords in 5 Steps

Password Security How to Create Strong Passwords in 5 Steps

01 Sep 2022


With the help of technological advancement, expatriates worldwide can now send money online using their smartphones through international money transfer apps. Many online money transfer companies launched these apps, including ACE Money Transfer. Due to many economic issues, the people of developing countries travel to developed countries to earn better and transfer funds back home for financial support.

With rapidly advancing digitisation, online scams have grown uncontrollably. Records show that users lose almost $5.8 billion yearly due to unsafe internet-based applications. The movement of money primarily takes place through smartphones; therefore, their security is essential as smartphones save most of your sensitive data. Thus, weaker passwords and other security tools can expose you to risks and dangers. Let’s learn entirely about how strong passwords can help ensure unbreakable security and how you can set the desired password.

Why Set a Strong Password?

Since online money transfers have shrunk to your pockets, where you conveniently place your smartphones, the first step to securing your phones is to set strong passwords. They must be unique and beyond the imagination of others. In the past, many incidents of unwanted penetration into one’s smartphone have been reported. The foremost step that you can take to secure your data is to set a uniquely strong password that no one can ever hack.

One of the crucial factors to consider in international money transfer 

Have you ever thought about the one most vital factor that is essential in your tech-driven financial behaviours? Well, you guessed it right! It is security. Since many companies have devised mechanisms through which you can send money to your loved ones, you must ensure that the application you are using offers an unbreakable security mechanism.

Now, your smartphones have most of your sensitive data saved. And the best way to send money abroad as an expatriate cannot be other than transferring funds in a few clicks to your loved ones with the help of your smartphones that are in your custody all the time.

Therefore, their protection is a must. And the best protection comes through the use of strong passwords. You will be wondering about passwords and how to create strong passwords simply by now. Take a look at some worrying facts about online fraud, and then learn the process in five simple steps.  

   

Online money thefts – quick facts

  • The world suffered a colossal loss of $20 billion in 2021 due to online frauds in e-commerce and other online industries
  • In Australia, over A$634 million were lost to online scams in 2021
  • In 2020, Australia suffered a loss of A$489.7 million, which was less than the following year
  • Investment frauds ended up with $126 million in 2019, up from $80 million in 2018
  • Romance frauds totalled $83 million, up from $60.5 million in 2018
  • The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) stated that men suffered losses of $77.5 million, which is more than women, who suffered $63.6 million

These statistics require you to be more careful about the use of your smartphones and the way you engage in online money transfer practices.
 

What is a password?

A password is a set of characters, unique to everyone, used to verify the identity of a user during an authentication process. These are called passphrase, passcode (primarily used in Apple devices), passkey and PIN (Personal Identification Number).
 

You can use more than one word, numbers only, symbols or a combination of all of these. 

These are important for the protection of your gadgets. Let’s look at the five simple steps to create a strong password.
 

Five simple steps for creating a strong password

Here are the steps following which you can create strong passwords for your smartphone’s security to your satisfaction.

Length of password

The first step in creating a strong password is to ensure that its length is 16 characters at least. For a fair amount of time in the past, an 8-character password was considered safe. Still, as the technology evolved, the password-cracking technology did not lag far behind, enabling computers to take less than a minute to crack passwords consisting of eight characters. But with the increase of character count from 8 to 16 in passwords, the estimated time a computer will take to crack a 16-character password is an astonishing 6 million years! 

When you make a global money transfer, you will likely expose your secret information if you do not use a strong and unbreakable password.

Use special characters

You must include special characters in your passwords in addition to upper-case letters, lower-case letters and numbers. Estimates suggest that including just one particular character in a 16-character password increases the time to crack your password from 6 million years to 2 billion years.

Avoid personal information

The security of your password will be compromised if you add your personal information to it, regardless of the length. You must never use names, numbers or symbols in your passwords that you are identified with.

The use of a password manager is recommended.

Estimates suggest that, on average, a person uses around 19 passwords to protect their information on their gadgets. Keeping all of these saved in your memory without mixing can be challenging. Therefore, it is recommended to use a password manager that will help you remember only one password – to access your password manager, with the rest remaining its responsibility to save and remember!

Use multi-factor authentication

It serves as an additional layer of protection for the passwords. This requires another bit of information unique to you or a token for a successful login to a service. It is used for the ones indulging in online shopping, etc.

Regardless of the strength of the passwords, always remember to follow the following few steps to ensure optimal safety.

  • Trying using a different username and password for every login or application you try to protect
  • The maximum time you should use a password must not exceed 30 days at the least and 60 at the whole stretch.
  • Whatever passwords you create, make sure you follow the one condition in creating them in light of the guidelines mentioned above – strong passwords. 


It is better to use strong passwords and keep changing them frequently. Writing down passwords or using weak ones to remember them easily is never admissible. It will run the risk of compromising your data. Besides, human care and caution are prerequisites to being safe. When you have a strong password and a secure application like ACE Money Transfer’s mobile application that uses end-to-end data encryption, money transfers across borders remain safe.


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