There are many rumours today that Apple has been hacked by Anonymous and 12 million Apple ID's / iTunes accounts have been compromised. Right now Apple hasn't commented and there is no proof that this has happened. Last year there were rumours that Sony's Playstation online service had been hacked. That was followed by silence and then denial by Sony. Then it was revealed that they were hacked.

Regardless if this is true or a hoax it's always a good idea to regularly change your passwords. I know I always go on and on about this topic, but it's so important. Here are a few guidelines when creating a password.

Use a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols.
Use something 8 characters or longer
Use a unique password for each of your online accounts. Do not use the same password for all you email accounts and website accounts. At least this way if one company is hacked or someone gets a hold of your password at least they can't get into all your other accounts.

If you want to check to see how secure a password is you can try Microsoft's Password Checker or HowSecureIsMyPassword.net I like the last one just because it does a calculation as to how long a desktop PC would take to crack your password. Here are the results of a password I tested.

It would take a desktop PC about

23 trillion years

to crack your password

DETAILS

Length: 13 characters

Character Combinations: 59

Calculations Per Second: 4 billion

Possible Combinations: 2 nonillion

This was a long password, but it was something that would have been easy for me to remember - it wasn't a crazy thing like "hfDD4h?U9$cd46". This just shows you that with a little creativity it doesn't take much to create a secure password.

And again, I would like to suggest my favorite password program LastPass.com. I have the need to use hundreds of different passwords so I need a program to keep track of them all, but even if you just have a dozen passwords it's very easy to forget which is for what. LastPass will solve your problems and even create those wacky, yet very secure, passwords for you if you so choose.

Whatever else you do today take a few minutes to update your passwords or at least your iTunes/Apple password.