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“We generally advise that people should treat their passwords with the utmost care like they would their bank details or sensitive financial information,” Gediminas Brencius, the Product Owner at NordPass, told Bored Panda in an interview.

“However, there are times that password sharing is inevitable, for example, shared tools at work or if you share services with your loved ones,” he added. Therefore, Gediminas’ advice is to think of a couple of things before sharing your credentials. “First, make sure that sharing is absolutely inevitable and necessary. Second, make sure you trust the person. And third, share it securely, for example, via password manager.”

“If available, always use two-factor authentication. When sharing a password with another person, you will have to also share the second-factor digits–in a way, making it a ‘single use’ share, since the digits will be different every time someone tries to log in. But still–share passwords only via password managers–this will help ensure there are no leaks,” Gediminas explained.

There are a couple of risks associated with credential sharing. Gediminas explained that one of them is actual sharing itself. “If you’re sharing the password in an insecure way, for example, via message, email, or another channel in plain text, there’s always a risk of it being intercepted, or someone unauthorized seeing the password.”

Moreover, Gediminas argues that you really need to trust the person you’re sharing the credentials with. “Depending on the type of account, the risk could be massive. Anywhere from the person changing the password and locking you out of the account to actual theft.”

If you want to create a safe password for your online logins, there are a couple of rules that Gediminas shared. “The standard rule is that your password should be at least 12 characters long, contain a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols.”

“However, equally important is the uniqueness of the password,” he said and added that “If you’re reusing the same one across multiple accounts, in case of a data leak, you risk jeopardizing all of them, instead of just one. Basically, I like to summarize it in one sentence–if you can remember your password, it is not safe enough.”

If you want to create a safe password for your online logins, there are a couple of rules that Gediminas shared. “The standard rule is that your password should be at least 12 characters long, contain a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and symbols.”

“However, equally important is the uniqueness of the password,” he said and added that “If you’re reusing the same one across multiple accounts, in case of a data leak, you risk jeopardizing all of them, instead of just one. Basically, I like to summarize it in one sentence–if you can remember your password, it is not safe enough.”

When it comes to the worst mistakes when creating a password, you may want to check this annual NordPass report which features the most commonly used passwords.

“Every year people use the same weak passwords and do not seem to learn their lesson. So I would say that using any password from this list would be a huge mistake, as well as using similar passwords,” Gediminas said and added that “Just because your name or your favorite sports team is not on this list, doesn’t mean it’s not being used frequently. Maybe it didn’t make it to the top 200 this year, but it might make it next time.”