Passwords

The use of passwords is constantly growing – making it more important than ever to observe some simple common sense:

• When contacting you, we or other reputable financial institutions will never ask you to verify full passwords or PINs, so ignore any such requests.
• Always keep passwords secure - they should not be written down or shared.
• Change your passwords regularly.
• Choose passwords that are easy for you to remember but impossible for others to guess.
• The most secure passwords are those that contain a mixture of letters, numbers and other characters such as punctuation marks.
• Use letters from a phrase or song lyric - for example the nursery rhyme 'The Grand Old Duke of York he had ten thousand men' would give you the phrase 'TGODoYhh10tm!'. The mix of upper case and lower case letters helps to make the password even more secure.
• Don't use your PIN - or reuse any other passwords.
• Don't use family names or birthdays - they are easy for attackers to guess, especially if you use your own name or birthday.
• Don't use dictionary words - attackers will often use dictionaries of commonly used passwords. So avoid passwords which contain 'real' words (such as 'hello' or 'password'), names, or words in foreign languages.
• Don't misspell common words - attackers are likely to try these combinations as well, especially sequences which replace letters such as 'I' with '1' or 'e' with '3'.

If you are asked to provide the characters from your PIN or password in full, or see anything else which is unexpected or unusual, please do not proceed with log in and telephone your Bankline helpdesk immediately.