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In today’s ever-changing world, there’s nothing more frustrating than logging in to an essential website or service you use and being prompted to change your password.

If you’re like us, you groan, try to remember another character or number you can throw on the end of your current password, and try to find a place to write it down. 

It’s important that passwords get changed, but it’s a pain.

There are ways around this that make it easier. Many browsers save your passwords now, but obviously you don’t want to save them on a computer that others might be using.

Writing down passwords is also a good alternative, according to some experts. And that means actually writing it down on a sheet of paper, not typing it somewhere. If you’re hacked, the document with all your passwords would be taken too. A list of passwords — assuming its locked up somewhere — is probably less likely to be stolen.

Experts also recommend passwords with a lot of characters. Something that isn’t easy to guess. For anyone with “abc123” as a password, we’re talking to you. Using information easily found on a Facebook profile or other social media sites is also a bad idea. Don’t do it. 

Experts say to use eight characters or more. Even better is using a string of random words together. 

Many people use the same passwords for just about every login. And think about how many logins that is — your bank, social media accounts, credit card accounts, streaming services and much more. 

In 2023, it almost feels like we’re a lot more likely to battle criminals online than we are anywhere else, though in most cases we probably don’t even know about it. 

Now is as good a time as ever to review your passwords and to consider if they are strong enough.