Most people who have used a password protected online service or have a login screen on their device have made this mistake.

They make their password out of their kid’s name, their name, their birthday, their dog’s name, their marriage date, and other things that may have been easy for them to remember.

There are now many ways people have figured out to decode or find out passwords to others devices.

Shoulder Surfing is at least one of the most common practice of knowing someone’s password. Shoulder Surfing is where someone is typing their password while another person is looking at their screen or keyboard as they are typing their password.

An alternative but much harder way to guess someone’s password is a Dictionary Attack where the attacker or hacker types in every word out of the dictionary from A to Z in the password box. Though this can easily be prevented by an attempt limit and by having a combination of numbers and letters.

Another way that is still very time consuming to figure out someone’s password is by using a Brute Force Attack. A Brute Force Attack uses every combination of letters and spaces to guess the password. Again, easily prevented by having a logon attempt limit.

A more fun way of getting someone’s password is to send emails out to people that trick them into sending you their login information. Some people have imitated banks and got strangers to give them their bank account information. This trick is called Phishing.

Other ways that are much more complex are creating malware (harmful software) to find out someone’s password. People have and will do use this technique and you can too with the right amount of schooling.

People are getting aware of how vulnerable their passwords at an increasing rate. They are finding out the time differences between how much easier it is to guess a 4 letter password than an 8 letter password.

But no matter what, there is ALWAYS a way to find out someone’s password.