If you want to make sure that you beat brute force hackers, then you must change your admin userid. Here is how and why.

If a hacker is randomly trying all possible 10 letter password strings containing upper & lower case letters, numbers and a few special characters, there are around 70 to the power of 10 combinations to try. That is a lot, but still just about possible with a dedicated attack.

But, if you change the admin id to be as strong, there are as many combinations there. Now, the hacker has to guess both at the same time – so 70 to the power of 10, squared.

That is why this trick is so strong. But, how to pick a new id? Well, don’t use your name! They could work this out from the URL registration, your nickname or comments in your blog. So pick an admin id that is unrelated. Maybe a nickname you were known as as a child (as long as you have not blogged about it!), a favourite person’s name (that you have not blogged about) or just a random id that you write down and can remember with your password.

Go to the user settings and change the nickname to whatever you want to show and make sure that your nickname is displayed on your posts, not your userid. This way hackers now have an aweful lot to guess!

Want to know how to do these or other security considerations? Come back again, or follow the blog security tag.

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