How safe is your online information? Not nearly enough, due largely to the secrecy of personal passwords being easily compromised by hackers and “shoulder surfers.”

But how about a solution that allows you to use images instead of words or even numbers or the combination of the two? This next wave of computer password security could possibly result in greatly enhanced security for online retailers and sensitive information stored on computer hard drives.

We all know that passwords are relatively easy to steal, especially because we don’t pick difficult ones. A research team at Rutgers University—Camden has developed a unique solution to this growing problem: forget about words and numbers when crafting passwords for your computer and online accounts, and use images instead.

One of the solution works by picking ‘click points’ on an image previously selected by the user. And another one, designed to avoid ‘shoulder surfing,’ works by clicking on random icons located inside a collection of other icons chosen by the user.

So we can all see that the future of password protection is very promising.

If you want to test this technology, you can download the program or simply run an interactive simulation.

So would this kind of technology really be practical? I really dont think so, but well who knows I might be wrong.