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An active user has approximately 7-8 accounts on online social networks. In my case, that number is 5 times because I keep trying new social networks and do not deactivate them after testing its usability.

A major mistake that we commit is keeping a same password for all online social networks. On few occasions, the same password is used for financial accounts as well such as online banking, insurance or investment accounts. To check the vulnerability of your passwords try HowSecureIsMyPassword.net.

According to a recent list on ‘most common passwords’ by Splashdata, a password management company; “123456” and “password” are still the top 2 commonly used passwords. See the top 10 most common passwords of 2013:

Unfortunately, hackers are getting good at cracking passwords. After recurring and successful attacks of ‘Syrian Electronic Army’, I am apprehensive about using any of the password management tools as well.

If they can hack Reuters, Associated Press’ Twitter account, Truecaller, Skype’s Facebook and Twitter pages as well as their blog, Microsoft Office Blog, websites of eBay and Paypal UK, DNS of Facebook and most recently Forbes website, they can get into any of the password management website and steal access to all my accounts. My thought can be termed as too skeptical or negative by security companies but it does sounds horrifying.

Resolve to use different passwords for different social networks and reduce your reliance on password managers at the same time. Also, I do not want to waste time in thinking the correct password and put extra burden on my brain.

But the question is, How?

The answer is simple, and it requires your creativeness.

Passwords requirements have evolved over a period of time and you have to create an 8-character long password using symbol / special characters, uppercase alphabet, lowercase alphabet, and numbers to be considered a strong password.

Select a word that you want to convert as your password.

I am using ‘Simplification’ as an example and substituting its alphabet to make it secure. S is converted to $, I is converted to ! and A is converted to @. This converted Simplification to $1mplific@tion.

I used it as a common word and created different passwords for each social profile, using following 2 formats. You can make any format using your creativeness and will never forget different passwords too.

I suggest to keep a completely separate password for mail accounts that are used to recover passwords of other social networks. Avoid using the same format for your mail and financial accounts. Access to your mail account can lead to resetting of multiple social profiles.

Please leave your comments below if you have any suggestions or disagree with my thought of using password
managers.

Kunal Mathur is a digital marketer specializing in social media marketing. He is a HootSuite Certified Professional and author of a book, Instant Social Media Marketing with HootSuite. Kunal is an expert in social media listening, reputation management, competitive assessment and analysis, and lead generation. Please follow him at @theKunalMathur.