Q: Why choose a good password?
A: In today's world, there is a need for increased account security.  It is more important now to choose a password that is hard to guess. It is no longer just one person who can make a few guesses at your password and then give up, but thousands of criminals with automated systems tirelessly scanning emails servers day and night, looking for weak accounts.

Q: Why would anyone care about my mail account? I don't have anything worth reading.
A: It's not your mail they are after (although sometimes it is); they want access to your mail account to do other things with it. The most common reason a mail account is compromised these days is to be added to a huge list of junk mail bots. These systems will log in as you, and send out junk mail (UCE or "spam") in the largest amount they can send in the smallest amount of time. Your mail account could be used to send out hundreds or thousands of pieces of junk mail every minute.

Q: What makes a bad password?

A: Several things can make for a bad password:

• A password based on a "dictionary" word. This is a word found in any dictionary like kitty or ceiling. This includes proper names (like susan or Einstein), or words with characters that look like letters, like m1cro$oft.  Most obviously, any account with password or test as the password are most susceptible to hijacking.
• Any password that is a row of characters on the keyboard, like 12345 or qwerty.
• Dates, or common terms not found in the dictionary, like jenny867-5309 or 7-4-1776 or catchfootballfever.
• The same as your username, domain, or login. If your account is mickey68@example.com, do not make your password mickey68 or example.

Q: So what makes a good password?
A: A good password is 8 or more characters long, contains a mix of upper and lower case letters, has at least one number, and one piece of punctuation. For more information on Atlantech's password policy, see this article.

Q: How do I change my password?
A: See our Knowledge Base article here for a step by step instruction on how to change your email password.