Effective Microsoft Word Shortcuts

Best Microsoft Word Shorcuts we need to know

Microsoft Word: Love it or hate it, practically everyone uses it. I've been using it so long, I thought I knew everything about it. But I stumbled across some super helpful shortcuts — hidden tricks and timesavers that make Microsoft Word easier and faster.
One caveat for these tips: different versions of Word may have different commands, so some of these may not work in your version.

How To Create A Strong Password

Creating strong passwords for all your online accounts is not a thing you should do. It is a thing you must do. Two months ago, my Google account was hacked into. The hackers changed my password and blocked my access to the account. Luckily, I discovered this early and got Google to change my password via my secondary email account.

Last week, the MakeUseOf Google account was also hacked into and the hacker had the audacity to transfer the MakeUseOf domain out and blackmail the owner. In case you are still thinking that your password is strong and safe, maybe it’s time to wake up.

What makes a strong password?

I shall not elaborate on this since many sites have already discussed this in great detail. In a nutshell, a strong password must constitute the following:

• It needs to contain special characters such as @#$%^&
• It must be at least 8 characters long.
• It must not have any common words such as 123, password, your birth date, your login name and any words that can be found in the dictionary.
• a variation of capitalization and small letters

In my opinion, even if your password consists of the above, it is still not enough. Your password needs to be totally unique and different for each and every one of your online accounts. This is to make sure that in the event that one account is hacked into, your other accounts will not be affected.

You must be wondering how you are going to remember so many passwords when you have a problem remembering your existing one. Here are some steps that I have used and they are very powerful. Here it is:

1. First, think of a thing, date, phrase, event, place or anything that is unique only to you. It must be at least 8 characters long. I call this the salt term. For demonstration purposes, I will use my name Damien Oh as the salt term throughout this article. Note that the capital letters and the space in between the name are part of the salt term. For your own account, please select a salt term that is difficult for other to guess.

2. I used the following rules to replace the regular characters with special characters. You can form your own rule.

• Replace all the ‘a’ with @
• Replace all the ‘s’ with $
• Repalce any space with %
• Replace any ‘o’ with 0
• Replace any ‘i’ with !

In this case, the simple term Damien Oh becomes D@m!en%Oh.

3. Now go to Password Meter and test the strength of your salt term. This is the result of the above term. If your salt term is not strong enough, you will see a list of items that you can improve on.

4. Once you are happy with your salt term and are sure that only you can decipher it, go to any of your online accounts now. To set a password for that account, append the name of the site, or the URL of the site to the end of your salt term.

For example, for a MakeUseOf account, I will use D@m!en%OhM@keU$e0f as my password and use D@m!en%OhG00glem@!l for my Gmail account.   If you do this for each and every one of your sites, you will be surprised to find that you have just created tens, hundreds, or even thousands of different passwords that you can remember easily.

Instead of the site name or the URL, you can also a variation of the site names or any other names that are related to the site.

Is that enough?

That is only the beginning. To really make it secure and hard for others to guess, you will need to change your password every few months. Some of you may find it a chore to come up with new passwords every month. Here is what you can do:

Instead of appending the site name to the end, you can now append it to the front, in the middle or even split the site name out into few parts. For example:

• M@keD@m!enU$e0h0f
• M@keU$eD@m!en%0h

You can also change the replacement characters such as @ for ~ and whatsoever. You can also do a complete changeover of your salt term to come up with a totally different password.

Conclusion

Generating and using a strong password is only your first line of defense against hackers. The most important thing that you should take note of is your internet browsing habits. When you are using a public terminal, make sure that it has the proper firewall and anti-virus installed, make sure your network is secure, log out when you are done with your session and clear the cache once you are done.

Sources: www.makeuseof.com

More: 

10 password tips for a safer online experience

most guessed passwords 

10 password tips for a safer online experience

Create unique password every time. When you are changing a password for an existing account, it should not be the same as the previous password. Also, do not use incremental passwords while changing it. i.e password1, password2 etc.

Change your passwords for all your accounts once every 6 months. Since passwords have a fixed length, a brute-force attack to guess the password will always succeed if enough time and processing power was available to the attacker. So, it is always recommended to change the passwords often. Schedule an recurring appointment on your calendar to change your passwords once every 6 month.

Related: Top 20 Most Common Passwords

Never write down your passwords. Creating a very strong password and writing it down on a paper is as bad as creating an easy to remember weak password and not writing it down anywhere. There are several interesting surveys done on this subject, where it was found that several people write down the password and keep it somewhere next to the computer. Some of them think keeping the post-it note below the mouse pad is secure enough. You should never write down the password on a paper. If you want to carry your password along with you all the times, use a password manager tool that runs from USB stick and take that with you all the times. 

Don’t share with anyone. Anyone includes your friends and family. Probably you might have heard the phrase “Passwords are like underwear, don’t share with anybody”. We teach our kids several things in life. Teaching them about online safety and not sharing the password with anybody should be one of them. 

Never keep the same password for two different sites. It is very tempting to create one set of passwords for all your emails, another password for all the banking sites, another password for all the social networking sites etc. Avoid this temptation and keep unique passwords for all your accounts. 

Related: How To Create A Strong Password

Don’t type your password when someone is looking over your shoulder. This is especially very important if you type slowly and search for the letters in the keyboard and type with one finger, as it is very easy for someone looking over your shoulder to figure out the password. 

Never send your password to anybody in an email. If you follow #3 mentioned above, this should not be an option. But the reason I’m specifically saying about this is because several hackers send emails as a support person and asking for your user name and password through email. Legitimate website or organization will never ask you for your user name and password either via email or over telephone. 

Change password immediately when they are compromised. Even if you have the slightest doubt that someone might have stolen your password, change it immediately. Don’t even waste a minute. 

Related:  Most guessed password

Don’t use the “Remember password” option on the browser without setting the Master Password. Don’t use this feature of the browser to store your username and passwords without enabling the “Master Password” option. If you don’t set master password on the firefox browser, anybody who uses your firefox browser can see all the passwords that are stored in the firefox browser in plain text. Also, be very careful with this option and say ‘Not Now’ in the remember password pop-up, when you are using a system that doesn’t belong to you. 

Don’t type your password on a computer that does not belong to you. If possible, don’t use someone else computer that you don’t trust to login to any website, especially to very sensitive website such as banking. It is a very common practice for hackers to use key loggers that will log all the key strokes on a system, which will capture everything you type including the passwords.

source: www.thegeekstuff.com

Most guessed password

If You're Using 'Password1,' Change It. Now.

The number one way hackers get into protected systems isn't through a fancy technical exploit. It's by guessing the password.

That's not too hard when the most common password used on business systems is "Password1."

There's a technical reason for Password1's popularity: It's got an upper-case letter, a number and nine characters. That satisfies the complexity rules for many systems, including the default settings for Microsoft's widely used Active Directory identity management software.

9 weirdest facebook related crimes

Here are 9 weirdest facebook related crimes around the world. There  are many anti-social elements that have made Facebook a breeding ground of terrorism, sheer fun and pleasure and scams among others.  The complaints have been made on matters such as terrorism, deaths,  scams, non-parliamentary offences, hate crimes and malicious messages that are related to the site.

5 best laptops under $500 for 2012

The best laptop under $500 for the year 2012 

The latest Windows based computer system that won't break the bank. All for less than $500


All 5 laptops are current Amazon Leaders and have excellent customer reviews around the web.