Millions of dollars are lost to hackers and scammers every year in Australia, and sadly it’s often our own fault – not that we really know it. Having a strong and secure password is key to your online safety and the NSW Government has launched a new online tool to allow you to check instantly how your password rates.

There are plenty of other ways to do this, even security companies like Trend Micro offer this as part of their Internet security offering, but to make it so accessible, easy to use and “government backed” gives it a solid sense of trust that is needed to reach mainstream Australia.

The website is simple – enter a password, click check and you’ll get an instant result.

Every password gets a rating base on how hard it would be to crack, how strong or weak the password is, and – it tells you if that password has been obtained in previous data breaches and therefore its known to hackers and scammers!

A simple password of course gets a bad rating:

But if you create a strong password, this tool can be a great re-assurance.

Critically, even if you’ve got a strong password, this tool will have you find out if your password, and of course likely you therefore has already been seen in a data breach.

Check yours now, and use it when creating your next password too.

My only issue with the site is that it doesn’t require things like numbers, capitals or special characters, which many sites will.

A password like “iwakeupwithtoday” may be long and in some ways strong, but it won’t meet the basic requirements of most sites.