If criminals or other malicious users steal this information, they can use your name to open new credit card accounts, apply for a mortgage, or pose as you in online transactions. In many cases you would not notice these attacks until it was too late.

Fortunately, it is not hard to create strong passwords and keep them well protected.

What makes a strong password

To an attacker, a strong password should appear to be a random string of characters. The following criteria can help your passwords do so:

• Make it lengthy. Each character that you add to your password increases the protection that it provides many times over. Your passwords should be 8 or more characters in length; 14 characters or longer is ideal.

• Combine letters, numbers, and symbols. The greater variety of characters that you have in your password, the harder it is to guess. Other important specifics include:

• The fewer types of characters in your password, the longer it must be. A 15-character password composed only of random letters and numbers is about 33,000 times stronger than an 8-character password composed of characters from the entire keyboard. If you cannot create a password that contains symbols, you need to make it considerably longer to get the same degree of protection. An ideal password combines both length and different types of symbols.

• Use words and phrases that are easy for you to remember, but difficult for others to guess. The easiest way to remember your passwords and pass phrases is to write them down. Contrary to popular belief, there is nothing wrong with writing passwords down, but they need to be adequately protected in order to remain secure and effective.

• In general, passwords written on a piece of paper are more difficult to compromise across the Internet than a password manager, Web site, or other software-based storage tool, such as password managers.

Create a strong, memorable password in 6 steps

Use these steps to develop a strong password:

1. Think of a sentence that you can remember. This will be the basis of your strong password or pass phrase. Use a memorable sentence, such as “My son Aiden is three years old.”
2. Take the first letter of each word of the sentence that you’ve created to create a new, nonsensical word. Using the example above, you’d get: “msaityo”.
3. Add complexity by mixing uppercase and lowercase letters and numbers. It is valuable to use some letter swapping or misspellings as well. For instance, in the pass phrase above, consider misspelling Aiden’s name, or substituting the word “three” for the number 3. There are many possible substitutions, and the longer the sentence, the more complex your password can be. Your pass phrase might become “MySoNAyd3Nis3yeeRsold.” If the computer or online system will not support a pass phrase, use the same technique on the shorter password. This might yield a password like “MsAy3yo”.
4. Finally, substitute some special characters. You can use symbols that look like letters, combine words (remove spaces) and other ways to make the password more complex. Using these tricks, we create a pass phrase of “MySoN8N i$ 3 yeeR$ old” or a password (using the first letter of each word) “M$8ni3y0″.
5. Test your new password with Password Checker Password Checker is a non-recording feature on this Web site that helps determine your password’s strength as you type.

Password strategies to avoid

Some common methods used to create passwords are easy to guess by criminals. To avoid weak, easy-to-guess passwords:

• Avoid sequences or repeated characters. “12345678,” “222222,” “abcdefg,” or adjacent letters on your keyboard do not help make secure passwords.
• Avoid using only look-alike substitutions of numbers or symbols. Criminals and other malicious users who know enough to try and crack your password will not be fooled by common look-alike replacements, such as to replace an ‘i’ with a ’1′ or an ‘a’ with ‘@’ as in “M1cr0$0ft” or “P@ssw0rd”. But these substitutions can be effective when combined with other measures, such as length, misspellings, or variations in case, to improve the strength of your password.
• Avoid your login name. Any part of your name, birthday, social security number, or similar information for your loved ones constitutes a bad password choice. This is one of the first things criminals will try.
• Avoid dictionary words in any language. Criminals use sophisticated tools that can rapidly guess passwords that are based on words in multiple dictionaries, including words spelled backwards, common misspellings, and substitutions. This includes all sorts of profanity and any word you would not say in front of your children.
• Use more than one password everywhere. If any one of the computers or online systems using this password is compromised, all of your other information protected by that password should be considered compromised as well. It is critical to use different passwords for different systems.
• Avoid using online storage. If malicious users find these passwords stored online or on a networked computer, they have access to all your information.

Keep your passwords secret

• Treat your passwords and pass phrases with as much care as the information that they protect.

• Don’t reveal them to others. Keep your passwords hidden from friends or family members (especially children) who could pass them on to other less trustworthy individuals. Passwords that you need to share with others, such as the password to your online banking account that you might share with your spouse, are the only exceptions.

• Protect any recorded passwords. Be careful where you store the passwords that you record or write down. Do not leave these records of your passwords anywhere that you would not leave the information that they protect.

• Never provide your password based on an e-mail request. Any e-mail that requests your password or requests that you to go to a Web site to verify your password is almost certainly a fraud. This includes requests from a trusted company or individual. E-mail can be intercepted in transit, and e-mail that requests information might not be from the sender it claims. Internet “phishing” scams use fraudulent e-mail messages to entice you into revealing your user names and passwords, steal your identity, and more. Learn more about phishing scams and how to deal with online fraud.

• Change your passwords regularly. This can help keep criminals and other malicious users unaware. The strength of your password will help keep it good for a longer time. A password that is shorter than 8 characters should be considered only good for a week or so, while a password that is 14 characters or longer (and follows the other rules outlined above) can be good for several years.

• Do not type passwords on computers that you do not control. Computers such as those in Internet cafés, computer labs, shared systems, kiosk systems, conferences, and airport lounges should be considered unsafe for any personal use other than anonymous Internet browsing. Do not use these computers to check online e-mail, chat rooms, bank balances, business mail, or any other account that requires a user name and password. Criminals can purchase keystroke logging devices for very little money and they take only a few moments to install. These devices let malicious users harvest all the information typed on a computer from across the Internet—your passwords and pass phrases are worth as much as the information that they protect.

What to do if your password is stolen

 Be sure to monitor all the information you protect with your passwords, such as your monthly financial statements, credit reports, online shopping accounts, and so on. Strong, memorable passwords can help protect you against fraud and identity theft, but there are no guarantees. No matter how strong your password is, if someone breaks into the system that stores it, they will have your password. If you notice any suspicious activity that could indicate that someone has accessed your information, notify authorities as quickly as you can. Get more information on what to do if you think your identity has been stolen or you’ve been similarly defrauded.

“While it is only one day, this is a milestone,” commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. He added that Chrome still faces a battle to unseat its main rivals including IE and Firefox in many regions. Chrome remains in 2nd or 3rd place in China, United States and Germany, for example.

“Whether Chrome can take the lead in the browser wars in the long term remains to be seen, however the trend towards Chrome usage at weekends is undeniable. At weekends, when people are free to choose what browser to use, many of them are selecting Chrome in preference to IE,” added Aodhan Cullen, commenting on the weekend surges in Chrome usage.

In the Irish browser marker, however, Chrome appears on track to take the number one slot, ahead of the worldwide market.  Chrome overtook Mozilla Firefox in May 2011, while it took the rest of the world another six months to hit this milestone.  At the same time, Chrome and IE battle it out for the top browser slot.  In Ireland, Chrome came within less than 1% of overtaking Microsoft’s IE for the first time in November 2011.  IE made a slight recovery and little over 1% separate Microsoft’s and Google’s browsers in a tantalising struggle for supremacy.

Browser Stats Comparison: Worldwide & Ireland, March 2012

“The relevance of all this to Irish business”, said Tom Molloy of Flux Web Design, “is that the old world order, where Microsoft’s Windows-bundled browser dominated the market, is about to be shattered.  This is good news for business and web users alike as standards-based web development displaces proprietary practices, artificially leveraged by dominance in the operating system market”.

Source: StatCounter

The bad news: As Facebook continues to roll out more new Timeline apps, your News Feed will likely get even more crowded. The good news: There are several quick and easy fixes to cut down on what you don’t care about and surface the information that matters.

Here’s a look at four ways you can tweak your Facebook settings to cut down on News Feed junk and make that feature more productive for you.

1. An Alternative to “Unfriending”

If you have friends you want to remove from your Facebook like but think unfriending them is too harsh, there is an alternative: You can unsubscribe from them.

If you choose to unsubscribe from a friend, none of his or her Facebook updates will appear in your News Feed but you’ll still be friends. They will still be able to contact you, and you can still contact them. That friend won’t ever know that you’ve unsubscribed from them, which they could discover if you unfriend them.

To unsubscribe from a friend, visit his or her Facebook profile. On the top-right of his or her page, you’ll see a series of buttons: Friends, Subscribed, Message or a gear icon. Click the Subscribed button to reveal a menu of options. To unsubscribe from your friend, click the “Unsubscribe” option.

You can also unsubscribe from friends right from your News Feed. To do so, hover over one of their posts and click the arrow for a drop-down menu. Here, you’ll have the option to unsubscribe from your friend entirely or unsubscribe from just their status updates.

The other options in both of these menus are also worth noting. From both, you can choose the types of updates you want to see from your friend: “All Updates” if you’re interested in everything; “Most Updates”, which is the default setting and excludes some posts; and “Only Important,” which will only show you updates such as changes in relationships, new jobs and location moves.

2. Hide Specific Applications from Your News Feed

If your News Feed is overcome with updates from Spotify or other applications and games, you can hide them for good. Here’s how:

Hover above a specific post in your News Feed. Click the drop-down menu and select the last option, “Hide all by [whichever application you no longer want to see updates from].” Choosing this option means you’ll never see updates from this application, regardless of the friend who’s using it.

If you ever want to unhide updates from an application, scroll to the bottom of your News Feed and select “Edit Options.” Here, you will see all the applications you’ve hidden from your News Feed. To start receiving updates and posts from one, click the X to remove it from the list.

3. Highlight Stories to Teach Facebook What’s Important to You

You can sort the posts in your News Feed two ways: “Highlighted Stories First” and “Recent Stories First.” Highlighted stories are ones that Facebook thinks will be most important to you.

If you sort your News Feed by “Highlighted Stories First,” you’ll notice that the top ones are designated by a blue corner in the top-left. To help Facebook learn which stories are and are not important to you, click the top-left corner of important stories and deselect ones that are not important.

Over time, Facebook will learn which posts you want to see, and will place these at the top of the highlighted story view, burying unimportant stories further down.

4. Filter Your News Feed by Friend List

The new Facebook Friend Lists, which launched in September, automatically group some of your friends based on who you interact with most, family members, coworkers and geography.

While these lists make limiting access to your profile, updates and photos easier, they’re also a good way to skip the firehose of News Feed noise and view only updates from friends you care about.

After you’ve created new lists or edited the ones Facebook has created for you, look for the “Lists” section on the left-column navigation. Sometimes “List” will be found under “More.”

If you have several lists, sometimes only the first few will show up. Hover over this section for the “More” option, then click to see all your lists. To view only updates from friends on that list in your News Feed, click the list name.

Kristin Burnham covers consumer technology, social networking and enterprise collaboration for CIO.com. Follow Kristin on Twitter @kmburnham. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline and on Facebook. Email Kristin at kburnham@cio.com

“We can look forward to a fascinating battle between Microsoft and Google as the pace of growth of Chrome suggests that it will become a real rival to Internet Explorer globally,” said Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. “Our stats measure actual browser usage, not downloads, so while Chrome has been highly effective in ensuring downloads our stats show that people are actually using it to access the Web also.”

In the UK, Internet Explorer also leads the market with 42.82%. Chrome is on 24.82%, having overtaken Firefox (20.56%) in July.