Question 1

How long should a password be?

Accepted Answer

Security experts recommend at least 12 characters for most accounts and 16+ for sensitive accounts like banking or email. A 12-character password with mixed case, numbers, and symbols has roughly 72 bits of entropy, which would take billions of years to brute-force with current technology.

Question 2

What is password entropy?

Accepted Answer

Entropy measures how unpredictable a password is, expressed in bits. It is calculated as: length x log2(pool size). A pool of 94 printable ASCII characters gives log2(94) = 6.55 bits per character. A 16-character password from this pool has about 105 bits of entropy -- considered very strong. Each additional bit doubles the difficulty of cracking.

Question 3

Should I use special characters in passwords?

Accepted Answer

Yes, when the site allows it. Adding symbols expands the character pool from 62 (letters + digits) to 94+ characters, significantly increasing entropy. However, some sites restrict special characters. If symbols are not allowed, compensate by using a longer password (20+ characters).

Question 4

Is it safe to use an online password generator?

Accepted Answer

This generator runs entirely in your browser using JavaScript -- no passwords are ever sent to a server or stored anywhere. You can verify this by disconnecting from the internet and the generator will still work. For maximum security, use a reputable password manager that generates and stores passwords locally.

Question 5

What makes a password weak?

Accepted Answer

Weak passwords include dictionary words, names, dates, keyboard patterns (qwerty, 123456), and anything under 8 characters. The most commonly used passwords in data breaches are "123456", "password", "123456789", and "qwerty". Using any of these is equivalent to having no password at all.

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