Should I Often Change The Passwords?

Are you anxious about the safety of your online accounts? If you have an account online, you may have heard the advice to change password frequently for protection. But is this advice valid? Don’t worry! You will get the answer in this article.

Many unwanted circumstances like the usage of public networks, unauthorized access of cyber attackers, or data breaches make changing your accounts’ passwords compulsory. Apart from these issues, it’s not necessary to change passwords frequently.

How Often Should You Change Your Passwords?

You can change your password once a year unless there is unauthorized access to your account or a data breach. Also, if you frequently use public networks for your work, changing your password every time you use it is better. 

Without the signs of unauthorized access or cyber-attacks, it is better not to change your passwords that often. When we change our passwords often, we use similar easy words to remember them, and this easy/weak password puts your account’s safety at risk.

Is it good to change Passwords regularly?

A few years ago, experts used to recommend changing your passwords regularly for safety. Even now, if you search for this question in Google, the most common answer you’ll get is that it is better to change your password once in three months. 

But nowadays, the scenario has changed a bit, and the experts have changed their advice slightly.

Online information security experts now don’t recommend frequent password changing, and the main reason behind this is they think frequent password changes may make the password weak. If you couldn’t understand what we meant by weak passwords, let’s explain it briefly.

Frequently changing your password means a high chance of creating a new memorable password similar to your old one. Resuing your old passwords puts your account’s safety at risk. 

Again, you won’t gain anything by changing it often because if you currently have a strong password, it is already hard enough for hackers to hack if you currently have a strong password. So, change it once a year if there are no unwanted circumstances. 

Benefits of changing passwords regularly

Even though experts don’t recommend frequent password changes nowadays, we still can’t deny the benefits of it. Let’s look into the detailed benefits of regular password changing-

1. Reduces the risk of Unauthorized Access

Change in your passwords can reduce the risk of unauthorized access to online accounts and increase the security of your confidential online data. It plays a significant role in preventing security threats when a data breach compromises your username and password. 

2. Prevents Brute Force attacks

Brute force attacks are attempts to try multiple password combinations until the hackers find the correct pattern. That’s why password-changing frequency makes it hard for brute-force attackers to find the right pattern of your password.

3. Limits Access 

It’s widespread for people to share some of their devices’ or accounts’ passwords like Netfix among those who are trustworthy, according to them. Even some organizations practice the habit of sharing passwords among their employees. 

However, most of these accesses are meant to be temporary purpose only, so it’s better to change your passwords regularly so that they can have access for a limited amount of time.

4. Prevents the Usage of Saved Passwords

It is very usual for people to auto-save their account passwords for quick login or access to their accounts. It may seem safe to you as no one else uses your device but don’t forget someone can steal it.

Changing your password on a device means saved passwords from other devices will be removed. Other devices won’t get the updated password information unless you put it in again. 

Is it safe to change your password regularly?

The safety of regularly changing your password depends on one primary factor: the strength of your new password. Cyber security experts recommend changing passwords once every 3 months, but you must not change it into a weak password to remember it.

If you select a weak password similar to your old one, the password change won’t be safe anymore. It will make your account easily accessible to hackers and malware attackers. 

However, you don’t have to change your password if it’s already a lengthy, strong password. You only have to change it if there is a data breach or after any unauthorized access attempt. In that case, not immediately changing your password can risk your account’s safety.

When to Change Your Password

For your online account security, experts recommend changing your passwords after possible safety threats. These are the potential cyber threats you may come across-

Detection of Malware on Devices

We all love to explore different content or articles on various websites, but some websites are unsafe to surf. If you keep surfing these kinds of unprotected websites, it is evident that malware and virtues will track your device. 

These malware attacks can put your personal information and data at risk. That’s why you should regularly scan your device with scanners. And if you find any malware software, immediately change your password to save your account from getting exposed to hackers.

Usage of Public WiFi 

Sometimes we use public networks in places like Airport lobbies, restaurants, and bus stops. Most of the time, these public networks are unsafe, and any hacker can easily get access to your account password by taking advantage of it. So you should change your password after using public WiFi or networks.

An Attempt of Unauthorized Access

Online accounts usually notify you if your account is logged in from any unknown device. If you get this kind of notification and it’s not on any of your devices, change the password as soon as possible.

After Sharing Access to Your Account

Sometimes we share access to our Netflix or joint online bank accounts with our close ones. But if you lose connection or contact with any of these people and want to regain the sole authority of your accounts, change the password. Then the accounts will get logged out from other devices automatically.

Is it OK to use the same password for everything?

Putting the same password for every account can greatly threaten your online data safety. So you can’t use the same password for everything, as it puts your accounts vulnerable to hackers. 

Using separate passwords for every account, it will be hard for cyber attackers to crack them. Reusing the same passwords in all your accounts increases the risk of credential-stuffing attacks. 

The cyber attackers who use this method use stolen information from one hacked or compromised account to get easy access to other accounts with the same password.

What if I Can’t Remember Multiple Passwords?

Now you may think about how it can be possible to remember different passwords for your accounts. The best way to solve this issue is to use a password manager. It works like a digital vault where your multiple accounts’ passwords are stored, and you can access them with one master password. 

How many times should you use the same password?

Experts don’t recommend using a common password for everything, so you should avoid it. But if you must use the same password for everything, monitor your accounts regularly and change that common password often.

What is the best way to manage passwords?

Using a password manager is the best way to manage passwords. It is a software tool that stores passwords of your multiple accounts and websites. 

You can easily access all your accounts’ credentials by using the master password of the password manager. So you don’t have to remember all the complex and lengthy passwords. Just remember the master password, and you are all set to go!

Benefits of Using Password Manager

These are the benefits you can get from using a password manager-

• It can generate strong and unique passwords, which can prevent password-related attacks.
• It can automatically fill in the login credentials of your accounts, so you don’t have to input them every time you use them.
• It can synchronize login credentials to any device so you can log in to your account from any unknown device in any urgent situation.
• It can store other confidential information like credit card details.

If you are interested, read this LastPass review.

Conclusion

We hope you have gotten the answers you sought after reading this article. In short, one must change passwords when needed under unwanted circumstances like malware attacks or other cyber attacks. Otherwise, you can change your password once or twice yearly for peace of mind.