A recent survey in the UK has found that 52% of Britons between the age of 18 and 25 use the same password for all of their online accounts, which puts them in tremendous danger of identity theft if their password is compromised, such as in a data breach of any of the companies with which they do business. Scammers depend on many people using the same passwords for all of their online accounts and will sometimes target online companies that have poor security to steal passwords to use at other accounts, such as online banking. Late last year, researcher Julio Casal discovered a massive data base of 1.4 billion unencrypted passwords available to cybercriminals on the Dark Web in a single file. The Dark Web is that part of the Internet where criminals buy and sell all manner of illegal and stolen goods and data. The file of unencrypted passwords indicate that the most popular predictable and insecure passwords are 123456, 123456789, qwerty (the first five letters of the top row of the keyboard) and password.
TIPS
It is very important to have a distinct password for each of your online accounts.  This is not as difficult as it may appear.  You can start with a strong base password, such as IDon’tLikePasswords, which has capital letters, small letters and symbols. Then add a few exclamation points at the end of your password and you have a strong base password. You can then adapt it for each account you have so that you will have a secure and easy to remember password for each of your online accounts.   Thus, your Amazon password could be IDon’tLikePasswords!!!AMA.
Some people prefer to use password managers that create unique strong passwords for all of your online accounts where you only have to remember the password to your one password manager to access your accounts. 1Password, Dashlane, KeePass, LastPass, RoboForm and SplashID Safe are some of the better passwords managers and they provide both free services and increased bells and whistles for monthly fees. My primary concern with password managers is that there have been data breaches at password managers in the past and they remain a prime target of hackers.
Whenever possible use dual factor authentication for you accounts so that when you attempt to log in, a one-time code will be sent to your smartphone to insert in order to get access to your account.  For convenience sake you can set up dual factor authentication so that it is only required if you are logging in from a different computer or device than you normally use. 
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