If you’d like to fortify your passwords to make them exceptionally challenging to crack, incorporating emojis can prove remarkably effective.

It might come as a surprise to many users but, as highlighted recently by Kaspersky, some popular apps and online platforms (e.g. Dropbox and OpenAI) permit the use of emojis to bolster the strength of passwords.

For example, computers treat emojis much like they do numbers and special characters. Whereas traditional passwords consisting of letters, numbers, and punctuation offer less than a hundred permutations for each character, Unicode boasts over 3,600 standardised emojis. Consequently, by simply adding one emoji to your password, you increase the complexity for hackers by almost 4,000 possible variations per symbol. Experts suggest that employing five distinct emoticons is akin to using a typical nine-character password.

Therefore, if you’d like to craft a password that is highly resistant to guessing or brute force attacks and offers an additional, unexpected layer of security against cyber threats, incorporating a couple of easily memorable (and swiftly typable) emojis may be the solution.

As a word of caution, however, some emojis are harder to enter. For example, on desktops, there may in some cases be problems in passing verification when signing in.