Protect your account: use a different, secure password, every time

Published October 7, 2019

By Joe Ferguson

You visit a textbook rental site and sign up. It’s school-related, so you use your UBmail address and UBITName password to make it easier to remember. Why not, right?

Now, imagine that textbook rental site has a breach...if your information is stolen there, it could mean criminals now also have access to your UB account.

Third-party incidents have affected UB students before. That’s why it’s crucial to never reuse your UBITName and password on other sites, even if they're school-related.

UB password, UB websites

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In reality, using your UB password on another site is not much different from just telling someone else your password. And if that person happens to leak it to another person, well... soon you can't be sure your accounts are really secure anymore.

And just adding '1' or '!' to the end of your existing password doesn't count as a new password, either--cybercriminals have software that can try every popular variation on a known password in seconds!

New account, new password

To stay safe, we recommend never reusing passwords, in part or in whole—make a new, secure password every time.

It may be frustrating to make and remember a new password, but here's a trick for making hard-to-crack passwords that you can easily remember.

Turn your password into a passphrase, by writing an entire sentence that’s specific to you, and quirky enough to remember without too much effort. For example, consider the following sentence: “Triangles are classified according to angles and sides.”

That sentence has 57 total characters, including a capital letter and a symbol. Better yet, it contains no personal information that could lead someone to guess it.

The UBIT website has other tips for creating safe passwords. Just remember, no matter how inconvenient it may be to create and remember new passwords…it’s a lot better than having your identity stolen.