How Frequently Should You Change Your Passwords?

It’s always a good idea to change your passwords regularly. But how often is too often, and can this put your accounts at risk?

Security

Oct 4, 2016

by PSafe Newsroom

There is a lot of contradictory information online about how frequently we should change our passwords. More than a decade ago, we might have used the same password for years, across a variety of different accounts. This is no longer an acceptable practice. With an increasingly technological world comes an increase in malicious threats. These threats not only target large financial companies and the like, but may also attempt to steal our personal information.

In an attempt to prevent access to our personal information, we’ve had to create stronger, complicated passwords for each account that are ideally “hack-proof.” Not only is this a difficult process, but it’s also been recommended that we change our passwords frequently — sometimes every 60 days. However, changing our passwords this frequently isn’t beneficial for us, nor does it make our accounts and information more secure.

Bad Password Habits
If you’re told to change your password for an account multiple times per year, you’re more likely to create “bad” passwords. Instead of putting in enough effort to create a strong password, you might minimally change a current password by altering a number, adding a different symbol, or else changing a lowercase letter to an uppercase letter. Add in the fact that you probably have at least a dozen different accounts that require passwords. If you change your passwords for all of these accounts too frequently, you’re not only making everything harder for yourself in terms of memorization, but you’re making those accounts less secure.

How Often You Should Change Your Password
Changing your password once (or twice) per year should be sufficient. If you change your password more frequently than that, such as every few months, you’re putting yourself and your account at risk. Even if you were to make strong new passwords every few months, you wouldn’t necessarily prevent any security risks. It would be more troublesome for you than for a potential hacker. However, if you feel like your password has been compromised, is too weak, or if you’ve shared it with someone else, then by all means change it immediately. But make sure you take the time to think of a strong, complex password that will secure your account until it’s time to change it again.

Download PSafe Total
If you really want to make your personal information more secure, download PSafe Total for your Android device and PSafe Total Windows for your PC to ensure that your data is protected against malicious threats 24/7. With PSafe Total’s Vault feature, you can even create a second password for important apps.