What is a password? Simply explained

You use a password to protect your user account online or on your computer, smartphone or tablet. In this article we explain what a password is in an easy and understandable way.

Password – what’s behind the difficult code

On the Internet and on the computer, you use user accounts and have to set a password for them:

• The password, in combination with your user name, then allows you to access your user account. Either you can freely choose the user name or it is your email address. However, you can almost always choose the password yourself.

• Mostly a password must consist of at least eight characters. Sometimes special characters, numbers and capital letters must also be used. The password is a secret password that you use to verify yourself and gain access to your data. For example, you can shop at Amazon after entering the password.

• By combining numbers, special characters and lower and upper case letters, your password becomes more secure.

• You can also password-protect your PC (Windows) or Mac user account so that no one else can access it.
• On a smartphone or tablet, the password is often replaced by a PIN (a four-digit number sequence) or a swipe gesture. On newer models, verification is now also often done by a so-called Face ID, i.e. facial recognition.