In the digital world we now live in, there seems to be passwords and logins for pretty much everything whether you’re signing in to your favourite social media account or accessing your mobile phone.
Making a strong password can help protect you and your identity from hackers with lots of sites and apps suggesting you use a certain amount of letters, numbers and symbols to help with security.
While you’ve probably set countless passwords in your lifetime already, there’s a little-known password hack that you might not be familiar with.
In this day and age, we think nothing of adding an emoji to a text message to our friends or a social media post but they can actually help keep your account secure, reports The Mirror.
The newspaper reports that Ben Van Pelt, founder of cybersecurity company TorGuard, has revealed that emojis can actually be used in passwords and could help keep hackers out of your accounts.
Ben said: “Not only are emojis easier to remember than some random letters and numbers, but they're also a less common trick for hackers to try.
“If someone's trying to break into your account by brute force and your password has only letters, numbers and punctuation, there are only a handful of options for each character they have to guess”.
He added: “With well over 3,600 standardised emojis out there, throwing one into your password means hackers have a significantly trickier time guessing it. Each symbol they try now has thousands more possibilities to consider”.
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“A password with five different emojis is like having a nine-character strong password, and with seven emojis, it's as good as 13 regular characters.”
Ben went on to say: “For a good, strong password, consider adding an emoji or two. It’ll certainly make it a right pain for anyone trying to guess it.”
While this hack could help you keep your account secure, it’s worth noting that not all websites and apps allow emojis to be used for passwords.
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