Why adding a 7 might make your password stronger
Including a number in your password doesn't make it much more secure, does it? If that number is a seven then it just might, according to ProxyScrape.
Strange though it may sound, seven is a rare number in terms of people's preference for it. People naturally gravitate towards using predictable patterns in their passwords. Numbers like 0, 1, and 2 are often overused due to their convenience on both keyboards and number pads. The number 7, however, is less predictable and less frequently used, making it a statistically rare choice.
"Passwords that incorporate the number 7 are significantly harder to crack," says CEO Thibeau Maerevoet of ProxyScrape. Studies suggest humans have a preference for certain numbers, such as numerals in product information. The number seven appears to be an outlier. It's often chosen when people think of a random number between one and 10. This paradoxically makes it seem less common in generic numeric patterns.
You're still skeptical, we know, but there is some science behind this. Including the number seven substantially increases the overall entropy (the measure of disorder in a system) of a password, making it more resilient to brute-force attacks.
Secondly the number has better resistance to changing algorithms. Many password-cracking algorithms are optimized to quickly test common patterns. The inclusion of less common numbers like seven can significantly slow down these algorithms, thus increasing the time it takes to crack the password.
There's a bit of psychology too, because seven is less common its inclusion in passwords can deter cybercriminals from banking on predictable user behavior, thereby reducing the likelihood of successful breaches.
You can harness the power of seven by using it as a letter substitute like 'Pa77ern' or using a phrase like '7Pillarsof Wisdom'. Don't however be tempted to add it to a predictable sequence like '1234567'.
Give it a go, it might just turn out to be your lucky number.
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