Password Tips From Google Worth Passing Along

Odds are that you -- and almost definitely some of your colleagues, friends and family -- have seen a list of good strong password-creation tips more recently than you've changed your passwords. And here's another list, this one from Google.As Thomas Claburn points out in an Informationweek piece about Google's password advice, the password-creation tips and procedures pointed out on a company blog are "timeworn" -- but not worn out, because the advice is so infrequently taken.

Google engineer HongHai Shen posted a blog filled with password advice that's not new, but is still good advice -- and in today's threat environment, aan environment increasingly filled with new mobile and messaging devices in need of strong password protection, it's crucial advice:

Don't use common words

Use different passwords for each account

Never share passwords

Change your passwords at least every couple of months

Make your passwords unique by using special characters and combinations of characters.

That's the essence, and it's worth passing the password word along to everyone you know who goes online.

Almost undoubtedly you'll be seeing a variation of this blog in a few weeks. Tips on how to create strong passwords and how to keep your password protection strong is one of the stocks-in-trade of IT security writing; we keep writing them because people keep ignoring them.

The question for you, and for everyone you forward the advice to, is this: The next time you see a piece such as this, or Thomas Claburn's that prompted it, or any other source of password advice, have you actually taken the advice and ahered to it since the last time you saw it?