With the number of passwords that the average computer user needs today, choosing strong ones is extremely important. Many people are unaware of the tactics used by people trying to break into their accounts. If the attacker has a personal knowledge of you, they can try to guess your password. Perhaps you used the title to your favorite song, your nickname, or your dog's name. These are all these things that are easily guessed by someone that knows you.

If the attacker does not know you, they can resort to a brute force attack. This entails running a program that will automate guessing every possible combination of characters that could make up your password. As you might guess, this can take a very long time. To drastically reduce the time this takes, the attacker will most likely choose to use a brute force dictionary attack. This method is similar to the last one but it only tries words present in a dictionary. Since most people will use a single word as their password, this method is very effective.

If, on the other hand, you choose a password that is a random string of uppercase characters, lowercase characters, numbers, and punctuation, the brute force dictionary attack will not work, and the attacker will most likely continue onto someone else with a password that is easier to guess. This is where Smart Pass comes in. Every time you are asked to choose a password, launch Smart Pass and generate a random one. You can customize it to specify the length of the password (always choose a password that is as long as is allowed). You can also specify what types of characters are allowed (uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and punctuation marks).