for one and all: not password and not 12345678
your passwords are the key to your data, and this includes your health record, your money, your secrets....
the same way you normally keep your key to your front door close to you and you do not cut copies you hand over to random people from the street, keep your computer password protected.
one point is to have good passwords, unique to every account (your email, your bank account, your twitter account) should all be different (in a future block I will talk about how to be able to remember them all).
to understand what are the elements of a good password, you might like to see how hacker work. no hacker is sitting on a screen manually typing endless password combinations. a good hacker - means a very bad one - is using simultaneously hundreds of pcs that he/she hijacked and using huge databases of known passwords to hack an account. if they find the entry door to an account e.g. to your mailbox they will be able to reset other passwords easily or they use the same combination on your other account like twitter, facebook

• first a good password is long, very long, because then more combination are possible and might not be in a hacker database. 
  do you want to see if your password is already compromised, you may have a look here: https://haveibeenpwned.com/Passwords 
• a good password is unique (see above)
• a good password contains lower case, capital letters, number and special signs, the best if allowed: a space
• a good password you are able to type and remember

great! how is this gonna work, you say. easy i say, use a sentence and change it slightly
her an example:
  - i love to watch lord of the rings (25 letter with the spaces, not bad)
  - i lOve tO wAtch lord of the rings (some capital letters, keep going)
  - i lOve tO wAtch lo3d of t4e ring5 (welcome, the numbers joined the party)
​  - i lOve tO wAt(h ^o3d of t4e ring5 (last but not least the special signs are here)
try and check if this password is already compromised - stay save
yours always helpfully - fraulein tech

the internet is a scary place and the 'virus' i am most scarred of is the cryptolocker. 
what does is do?
- it holds all your files ransom and only releases them when you pay a ransom fee.

•    until now no solution has been found to get your files back without paying

- how do you protect your files?

• use your sense for danger by for example: not clicking unknown links, download from untrusted websites. these are the same rules you use in your day to day life by not open the door to everybody or go for a night walk in the bad district of your city
• make sure your computer is always up-to-date
• activate in Windows 10 the ransom protection per folder and protect all your important folders, the main document folders are chosen (see here a very good explanation how-to-do
  www.cnet.com/how-to/protect-your-pc-with-windows-10s-antiransomware-tool/
• make sure you have a virus protection running (but this is NOT a complete protection as virus architects are very smart)
• have a back up of your data that is NOT - I repeat  is not -  connected to any computer in your network. if the backup is permanently connected (e.g. your online back-up in the cloud) to any computer or other devise in your network, the cryptolocker can easily reach the back-up data and make it unusable as well
• have the file extensions visible switched on, so you might see when your files getting infected to do this go to your file explorer and tick file name extensions in view. If you are lucky you might be able to disconnect your devise quickly

​stay safe
​yours always helpfully - fraulein tech