Upper-casing password can foolproof your e-mail account

In December, media firm Gawker urged subscribers to change  their passwords after its user database was hacked and more  than 1.3 million passwords were stolen. The company, which runs a series of irreverent blogs on media  and technology, warned that simple passwords could be  vulnerable to attacks by hackers' computers Simply upper-casing your password can minimise a hacker's  chance of finding out your account. A six-letter password in lower-case text takes a hacker's  computer just 10 minutes to crack. But make those letters upper-case and it takes 10 hours  for it to randomly work out your password. Add numbers and/or symbols to your password  and the hacker's computer has to work for 18 days. Despite widespread warning, 50 per cent of people  choose a common word or simple key combination  for their password, the Daily Mail reports. The most used passwords are 123456, password,  12345678, qwerty and abc123. However, the security conscious among you may  want to try this - choose a nine letter password that  includes numbers and/or symbols as this would take  a hacker's computer a staggering 44,530 years to break.