Well, not officially. But Gizmodo writer Matt Buchanan believes there should be an annual date every year for us to all change our passwords, with today the very first and “unofficial” start of the possible commemoration.
With so many online sites requiring a password, most of us have come up with 1 or 2 passwords that we use for everything. So all it takes is for one site to be compromised, such as when Zappos was recently hacked. Once Zappos was compromised, hackers had millions of passwords at their disposal that they were then able to randomly test on other sites such as Amazon or iTunes. Imagine the havoc a hacker could do to your bank account once they have access to one of your favorite sites, where having your password would allow them to spend your money.
So in the interest of password safety, today is CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD day. This is the time to go through all your accounts and pick a new, hard to crack password to safeguard your accounts. Today might also be a good idea to find a quality password manager. Some, such as 1Password and Clipperz will generate a random password for you, then store the password into memory so you’ll never need to memorize it. Therefore, using your birthday or maiden name for all your accounts will never happen again!
