Munich, May 21 :

A safe combination of characters should be used when selecting a computer password. Names should be avoided in favour of random numbers and letter combinations like 1M@l&st_k8KuP, recommends PC Professionell magazine.

Lower case and capital letters should also be used alternately to make life harder for password crackers.

Hackers use various methods to crack passwords, the magazine reports. If the password is entirely unknown, then the so-called brute force attack is often used.

This involves a tool to systematically test out all possible letter and number combinations. The longer the selected password, the longer the cracking process will last.