Often, for ease of remembrance, people will settle for simple passwords, such as dictionary words. Many people do not realize how easy these are to crack. For instance, on Unix systems passwords are encrypted by default (some Linux distributions now offer more secure methods) in a password file. Others can then encrypt a list of dictionary words and compare the files. If an encrypted string meets up, then your password has been founded out.

Anyway, this goes to show that you need something unique. About everyone seems recommends using uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and characters. However, this doesn’t mean you need a password such as Yt536/$65dHjdh&4`, though I do recommend you use this mixture. You can have something quite memorable.

• First, put a word that is memorable to you but others wouldn’t think of, such as your grammar school or your grandmother’s maiden name. Capitalize the first letter, and possibly another letter later in the word if that isn’t too confusing. If you are on the geeky side, you could even replace some letters with numbers, such as “t” with “7?. So for example, GreenWood or Gr33nWood.
• Add a symbol or two in the middle. Try to make them somewhere different on the keyboard, but ones that you can remember. They can mean different things. Such as @ for “at”, $ for “money” or “~” for about.
• At the end, add three to five numbers. Here you could have a previous area code, a memorable year, a previous computer model number… whatever you could remember.
• Make sure that you can make this into a memorable phrase, such as GreenWood@~1970. This would represent that you went to a school named Greenwood at around 1970.

A secure password greatly reduces your chances of being hacked. Even so, you also need to take care not to use the same password everywhere. Unfortunately, some web sites are created primarily to steal passwords. If you were to register on such a site with the password you use everywhere, then you could loose quite a bit.

Security can be hard work, but in the end it always pays off. I myself have been guilty of being lazy and using the same password everywhere. Lately I have been trying to change everything out.

I’d be interested to hear about how you make your passwords.