Security expert reveals surprising way to make your password stronger: use emojis
Need a stronger password?
Experts say to use emojis.
On a computer, it turns out that emoticons are considered a symbol, which can beef up your passwords and make them more secure in combination with letters and numbers.
“When intruders try to brute-force a password containing letters, numbers and punctuation marks, there are fewer than a hundred variations for each symbol they need to pick,” Stan Kaminsky, with the cybersecurity giant Kaspersky, told The Sun.
Even better, emojis might be easier to remember than a “jumble” of letters, numbers and punctuation, and they often aren’t used in a “brute-force” attack, which is when hackers attempt to log in to an account using a long list of potential passwords.
However, Kaminsky warned that not every site will allow emojis in passwords, and including many emojis in a passkey could slow down the login process.
Psychologists have encouraged people to use affirmations as login passwords to bring positivity into their lives — at least for a brief moment during sign-in.
“The key is to choose a new password that reflects the state of mind you wish to establish,” Dr. Mariah G. Schug, a Psychology Today contributor, previously suggested.
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